Fran Wescott

I’m starting a new professional journey. I’ve decided to do something wild and woolly: I’m going to live and be guided by my heart. I’m a writer. I’m a communicator. I’m a storyteller. I’m going to find people and organizations that want to employ those skills. It’s time. I need to find out now what it feels like to run on all fucking cylinders. It’s simple enough to state that as intention. In fact, it’s felt very organic and “right” to set out on this professional journey with just that much in my pocket. But here’s the catch: you also have to have faith. And faith is a tricky thing. Sometimes faith comes to the party attached at the hip with doubt. You don’t recognize it until faith gets good and comfortable and decides to be noticed. I know this because I have had a few moments of doubt during this so-far-short journey. OK, I’ve had more than a few moments of doubt. I’ve had several dozen moments of doubt. OK, maybe a few more moments than that; but in the end – always in the...

I have always written and yet never considered myself a writer. I’d written overly-long emails detailing the days’ events; I’d written formally first for college (honors thesis) and then for work (television producer). But up until my participation last year in my first writers’ workshop, I’d never considered myself a writer. And I’d never considered that what I was writing belonged to me. I was either proposing a theory about the relationship between Shakespeare’s English history plays and Elizabethan Historiography; telling the story of my children’s youth; or relaying a critical shift in public policy. I didn’t feel that any of the words to paper reflected me or what was in my heart or tumbling around in my head. But in this last year I’ve been writing in community with some amazing Women. They have taught me so much, but perhaps most importantly (and there have been a lot of important lessons) I’ve learned that in fact those stories are mine. I’ve learned that when I sit down to ...