Ever since I was little, I have loved to read and write. I would sit down for hours and fill pages with an idea I had for a book. I had multiple piles of story ideas. I've always wanted to publish a book, and that's still a dream of mine (keep dreamin' girl), but I'm just trying to get through nursing school first.

This year I have had the opportunity to take my writing to a much more public level through The Odyssey. Yes, it's very intimidating submitting your work into the world so I don't know how I'm ever going to write a book.

But I've read so many books, articles, poems, quotes, etc that have had such an impact on my way of life/thinking. I just want nothing more than to produce a piece that touches someones soul and mind like some of the works I've read.

This might have already happened and I just don't know it, but you're probably thinking, "nahh, not with your writing style", but my messages I write about could have impacted someones life even for a day (and that would be such an accomplishment for me).

My wish finally came true.

My grandmother recently passed away on January 31st, 2017. Her husband passed in 2003, so my dad has been left with just his mother for many years now. I'm not going to lie, January 31st was a very hard day for me, I can't imagine what it was like for my father.

Unknowing to what was going to happen a couple days after I wrote my last article (titled Young Sponges), I wrote about my parents and how they have impacted my life. Some good, some bad but hey, we're all human and that's just alright because I would be no where without my parents. When my article came out on February 1st, Dad texted me saying he really loved my article and that his soul needed it.

I almost broke down into tears.

When I was in 7th grade we were challenged to write a report on a loved one. I wrote about Grandma Walker: her life when she was growing up, when she joined the Air Force, how her and Grandpa Walker met in service, and so much more. The day after she passed, dad wanted to find the report so bad. After searching the depths of my super old Dell computer's files, he recovered it. He saved it to his desktop on his work computer so he can always read it.

Writing is such a powerful tool. I didn't know in 7th grade that that report was going to mean so much 10+ years down the line, but I wrote it because I loved to write.

So I plan to write something about my grandma soon, but honestly I don't even know where to start. It might take a while. She was one hell of a nurse. She was also a total bad ass: she was in the Korean War and she was a 1st Lieutenant. She was still getting calls from the hospital, asking her to pick up a shift, in her 80's.