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The Healing Power of Words
For as long as I can remember, words had an impact on my life. As a child I was diagnosed with dyslexia, but my Nonna never let me use that for excuse. And she hated the word bored. “As long as you have books and imagination you will never be bored.” I can still hear her voice. Often on rainy days she’d sit us down with a list of words and see how many words we could create out of the list of words.
For as long as I can remember books and words were parts of our relationship. Nonna was the one who taught me to read at the tender age of three, (take that Dyslexia) And it was Nonna who took me to book sales, where she would allow me to feel paper bags full of books, no wonder that in the third grade I tested at a Sophomore level of reading, by then I was reading everything from The Pinballs to biographies on Martin Luther King Junior. It was Nonna who instilled in me that words have power, to build up or tare down, and as a writer she encouraged me to use my words to build others up and not to cut them down. (I hope I make you proud Nonna.)
