Some people are born to sing. Dance. Act. Teach. Heal. Build. Govern. I was born to write. This isn’t said to imply I’m a gifted writer … just that I was born to write.

It’s been my life’s calling. I’ve been writing since pretty much I could put pen to paper. I remember writing full-on chapter books in elementary school, about identical twins named Kayla and Alexis and the shenanigans they got into (this was long before I began reading about the Wakefield twins). I wrote short stories in between homework assignments. I wrote poems on turquoise and lilac Super Shades notebook paper.

And in sixth grade, I began to regularly keep a journal. It was a small pink diary covered in assorted color hearts. And it had a lock. Since I shared a room with my younger sister, I slept with it under my pillow every night. To this day, I’ve never again had a journal with a lock. Instead,  I have boxes and boxes full of spiral-bound notebooks, hard-bound fancy journals … and inside each of these books is a chapter of my life. Some journals lasted six months; some lasted a full year. I’d pour my heart out, talk to myself, imagine conversations …

Within these pages I shared my first crush, took my first international trip, vented about fights with friends and siblings, divulged envy, battled body image issues, had my first kiss/first boyfriend/first heartache, lost my grandma, studied abroad, met my husband, graduated college, graduated grad school, had my real first job, leased my first car, got engaged, got married, bought our first house, traveled extensively, moved multiple times, lost weight, battled my disordered eating issues, gained weight/got healthy, got pregnant, became a mom ...

And somewhere in the past few years, I lost my passion for journaling. Ok, I lie. I lost the desire to make time for journaling. Amid all my other responsibilities and interests, journaling fell to the wayside.

Sure, I have kept up with blogging (albeit not very well) … but I don’t have the time to write my heart and soul the way I used to.  And blogging is selective venting/sharing … not the same as journaling. For instance, you won’t hear about the sweet thing my husband did — or our last fight — here on my blog. You won’t hear about what’s going on with my parents or my siblings; my job or my friends.

I tend to blog about body image, motherhood, my kids, being a working mom … and my life is that and more.

So this week, I found a journal a friend had given me last year for my birthday that I’d been waiting for the right moment to write in. At first, it was “once I finish my other journal” and then it was “after we move” and so when I rediscovered the beautiful bound book, I began to write. And I remembered why I love and miss journaling so much. It’s therapeutic. It’s comforting. And it’s innately part of who I am. Melissa. Melissa the 34-year old woman, not Melissa the wife, the mom, the PR manager.

I won’t promise myself I’ll write every day, but I’m definitely going to be making a concerted effort to write more often. To rediscover a piece of me that has fallen off the radar, especially since becoming a mom. While my world is very much centered around my little family (and I wouldn’t have it any other way), I also believe it’s important for me to have outside interests and passions, things which — very easily — can be pushed aside with the demands of life. The irony of doing so is that these passions and interests fulfill us. Make us whole. Remind us of who we were before (before marriage, before kids, before whatever).

That person is very important, and it’s easy to lose her along the way. So I’m hoping to resurrect her just a little bit. She’s in there, somewhere.

How about you? Is there a hobby or interest you’ve put aside for one reason or another that you’d like to pick back up? What’s holding you back?