This post is part of my Exploring Angkura series. Come behind-the-scenes with me as I introduce my newest project, Angkura: Hesed, my soon-to-be-released YA Christian Fantasy novel.
How’s your relationship with your younger self?
When my son was in sixth grade he had a pizza business. My parents owned a bakery, so they would help him make the pizza dough, put the pizzas together, and freeze them. He would sell them frozen from a deep freezer at our house.
A couple of years into his business, my son turned to me and said, “When I am working in the kitchen with Mama Lane and Pappy, I feel alive.” He paused and smiled. “I feel like I’m doing what I’m meant to do.”
In May we attended his Chef pinning ceremony and he asked Mama Lane to pin him. It was a beautiful full-circle moment. A moment where I realized that my son is still walking side by side with his younger self. He listened to that feeling of this is what I was made to do and pursued a degree in Culinary Arts. In that ceremony he could fist bump his younger self and say “Hey, we made it.” They will walk into the future together.
My relationship with my younger self is very different. I made choices in my teen years that I regret. I put my younger self into a perpetual time-out. She’d made too many mistakes and couldn’t be trusted.
I didn’t realize that’s what I had done until later. Life got busy and noisy with marriage, career and raising three kiddos. My younger self and her wounds were easy to ignore.
I began writing Angkura: Hesed as an adventure story for my children in 2014. In the beginning it was structured like a Magic Tree House book. Twelve chapters. The main characters were children. Non-stop action. In this early version, there were two older teens that represented me and my husband and three younger kids to represent our three children. But it wasn’t finished. The story wasn’t quite right.
The more I wrestled with the story, the more my character’s story rose to the top. And in the struggle I realized, it wasn’t my character, it was the voice of my younger self, the one I’d been ignoring all these years.
She wanted her voice back.
I did not welcome her with open arms. I was resentful about decisions she made years ago, and in the next few drafts of the story, her character was not very likeable. She was moody and angry. An early reader commented that she didn’t really like my main character.
That’s when I realized I didn’t either.
Then I read Running Away to Home by Reni Bumpas. Simply put, this book is about a young girl who made bad choices. Getting to know the main character and understanding her reasons for her terrible choices helped me feel compassion for the decisions made by my younger self. As I read this book, something happened.
Healing.
I began listening to my younger self, journaling her words. I began asking why we made the choices we did, and I listened to her answers for the first time.
After years of ignoring her, I embraced her. I forgave her. I forgave us. We began working together to shape Elizabeth’s character in Angkura: Hesed. Maybe that’s why it took me 12 years to write this book. I wasn’t just creating a world and a storyline, I was rebuilding myself.
Angkura:Hesed is our fist bump. It is our “Hey, we made it.” And I am looking forward to walking into the future with my younger self.
But there is also more to consider. My older self can look back along the span of my life and trace God’s redemption in spite of my foolishness and mistakes. I can see the beauty of the story He has been weaving this whole time. Older me can point out this beauty to younger me, because she hasn’t learned to see it yet.
Angkura:Hesed also honors the bigger story, the one God where God is weaving all of our stories together to accomplish His plans for redemption. This is where hope comes from. No matter the view from the moment where you and I are right now, we know that there is more. We know that God has good planned. This is how we walk through a broken world with hope.
We need both sides of ourselves.
Where are you today? Are you on speaking terms with your younger self? Our younger selves are messy, I know. But they have something to say, and we have something to teach them.
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Erin Ulerich lives and writes in a rural Mississippi community beside the beautiful Natchez Trace Parkway. She is the author of In Unexpected Ways: Christmas in Everyday Life, a devotional that encourages readers to notice God’s presence in the ordinary moments. Her first YA fantasy novel, Angkura:Hesed is coming soon. Connect with Erin at erinulerich.com
Connect with Erin at erinulerich.com, on Instagram and Facebook.