I have heard many friends say that fear stands for either; fuck everything and run, or face everything and recover. For some reason I was pondering the word fear on my run today. My route takes me down a highway and eventually I veer off to a portion of the Appalachian Trail. For some strange reason I can run on the road, no problem, even when you can see the driver applying makeup or changing the radio station and coming just a tad too close for comfort. But when I head down the trail, immediately thoughts of saber toothed tigers and grizzly bears invade the serenity of the woods. Each twig snapping is not a squirrel, but a rabid fox, that will take me down with its bloodied fangs. I miss the lush green that shifts to wetlands within a quarter mile, because my brain is on overdrive. I pant to the top of the hill to the road and semi trucks that somehow seem safer than the dark of the forest. I wanted to create a new acronym for fear, and the only positive one that I came up with was, Find Every Abundance Radiantly. Now I do not know if that makes any sense to you, but it does for me. I was in a most beautiful part of the trail, the path was soft with pine needles, I crossed over a brook filled with cattails, and ran through moss covered rocks and ivy. I did not see the abundance that surrounded me, on all sides. I chose to feel fear, fear of mauling by extinct species at that. Today, for the rest of the day I choose to find each and every abundance radiantly. If not radiant then what?
● About Me
I wrote and published my first blog post on May 26, 2009. I was about to turn 36 and had been accepted to Mount Holyoke College as a non-traditional student, on my way to completing a Bachelor of Arts in English with a minor in Medieval Studies. I had managed, finally, to know what general direction I was traveling. As a self proclaimed voracious reader I knew that I needed a vocation that would allow me to engage daily with words: reading words, writing words, and hearing words. I also needed to eat, so I navigated my way to a teaching position and I began to fine tune my craft. I love to teach and I love my students, but I also needed to continue to hone my own literary technique, voice, and style. I continued my education in order to delve deeper into literature, making connections, and most definitely, writing. I gained more confidence as a reader as well as a writer of both creative and analytical text. That first blog post in 2009 is short, the writing average, and the topic mundane, but as I continued to learn from other writers I began to understand that to become a better writer I needed to write more. Each time I write and release a poem, a post, or a story, I hone my skills. I invite you along for the ride, for this journey of mine as I attempt to wrangle a wealth of ideas and competing directions into an organized freshly paved path to publication. I might get distracted along the way, but sometimes those detours lead us to amazing views and new friends.
Laura Smith Writer 
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