I believe I was born a person who looks inwardly for answers, perhaps because I felt at an early age that the outside world offered so few. I wrote my first story in third grade, a rambling tale of being lost in the mountains and learning to survive there, alone and independent, reveling in my solitude. Of course, I didn’t use words like these at age eight, but the concepts were there and I felt a power in this ability to produce a world that held adventure and beauty as well as answers for a quiet, lonely child.

I continued to write as I grew up, stories and poems most of which have long since disappeared into nothing but foggy memories of sitting over notebook paper late into the night, escaping into a private world of characters and places as real for me as the teachers and friends I saw each day at school. When I found my way to Berea College, I entered a world of more “educated” approaches to pondering on meaning and the universe and religion and humanity and all those topics a good liberal arts education opens. Then life continued to happen—marriage, children, demanding career—much of which was very, very good, but the time and space for looking inwardly and drawing out the visions, characters and places that had filled and sustained my spirit was diminished and lost to me. The stories stopped coming and the poems withered on the vine as I struggled to find balance. Without realizing it, I stopped breathing; I stopped growing; I stopped being in many ways.

I didn’t realize what I had lost until a late summer’s day in 2008, a month or so into attending Sensei Bill Adams’ Shaolin Do Karate class, when he asked us to write an essay on the mural that welcomes students and visitors to his dojo. The painting shows an old master sitting under an ancient tree and sharing his wisdom with a young student starting out on the way of the martial artist, taking her first step. In this painting, I saw myself and my teacher and I felt my story began to blossom and grow and the words poured out of me—what I would request as an eager young student and the answers the master might give both to encourage me and to challenge me to reach higher and go further. The power I first had felt at age eight, that had lain dormant and silent for twenty of my forty-odd years, began to stir within me, awakened by the fact that I breathed into that space again and brought light and life back to places that had been dark for too long.

As I continue my practice at the Kirksville Martial Arts Club dojo, I find the awakening continues as well. Each day, I learn from the body-mind-spirit connection and I take another step toward remembering who I am and finding my strength within. Meditation and Tai Chi Chuan especially have allowed me to breathe life back into a dormant blossom that has clung tightly closed to a branch for too long. As that bloom unfolds to the sun, wind and rain each day, I take another step closer to being whole in body, mind and spirit.

When I write, I feel a force that is in me and beyond me, and I must let it flow. The act of writing makes me feel so deeply alive that I arise from the task more whole. Throughout the day I can hardly wait to get back to this passion, and the thought that a story lies waiting for me sustains me through difficult times. So this is what the practice of martial arts and Tai Chi has returned to me—the joy of looking inside myself, learning to appreciate my love of solitude and stillness that I have often felt was “wrong” by the standards of this world. In the stillness and in the flow of words and images that fill my mind and soul like refreshing water, I am alive.

When Sensei Adams asked me to serve as a Shaolin storyteller for our dojo, I felt I had been awarded a high honor—the opportunity to share with others my journey, my thoughts and my path. Each story I write, inspired by our Sensei’s paintings and our conversations, reflects the lessons I am learning. I hope these simple tales provide each reader some light, some direction and some space to breathe. My hope is that they bring others one step closer to where they need to be, the place where being is enough.