I doubted if the day would come. I had been working on my memoir for over 10 years, admittedly at a more stop than go pace, chronicling the timeline of my youth, coming of age to adult years. I had recorded memories over the years, nestling them in my mind as if contributing along the way to my DNA, creating a map to becoming the person I was destined to be. I thought my memories and sensory connections that reminded me of my encounters with people and places, to a birch tree and to home were enough to guide my memoir in establishing an innate connection I would have with my reader. I thought I had what it took to call not only what I was writing, a story, but also a memoir. But my writing fell short of what made a story and a memoir.

The day did arrive when all of it came together. However, I do not take sole responsibility for mastering my arrival. Professional intervention enabled me to pull story and memoir in tandem and rediscovering a time when I was learning more of myself and the places it happened worked together to rush the hurdle of development, overcoming the obstacle.

My first go around with a developmental editor was as I expected. She questioned me in the right places, prompted me for

 more when needed, and called out my many contradictions. I accepted that I was on a long road to my new developmental rewriting journey. I called on my stamina and dug my heels in deep, to acknowledge difficult work ahead to uncover deeper issues and expose their meanings. It wasn't until pensive work, detailed analysis of what was behind each scene, its placement, the paragraph and the chapter, answering my own question of why I chose to write about this in the first place, that I had landed on the other side. When this journey was completed, I was lifted from the ground and stood on the other side of the barrier. My manuscript’s development was complete.

I likened this journey to my reflection as a little girl growing up in my house on Carlisle where spaces had become a Petri dish for my personal development. I would often sit on the yellow and white shag carpet in my bedroom in this one particular space and engage my creative mind, filling silence the closet walls enveloped with talk in my creative mind. I surveyed the perimeter of the closet floor, spying an Etch-A-Sketch, Light Bright and a plastic briefcase containing art supplies. A large shoebox filled with crayons, a Singer Genie sewing machine with a macramé box slid underneath, knitting and crochet needles sticking out of an old canvas bag lined the opposite floor. My cave-like surroundings gave me security and inner contentment as the closet walls loomed tall and wide yet my small being sat small and enveloped in the middle on the walk-in closet floor. My view was not limited to this small space. I  would turn my head to the outside, my bedroom where a small glass ball vase with a hole threaded by a thin plastic rope hung over the lock of my double hung window caught my eye. The brazen sun enveloped the ball and took hold of the roots as they struggled to expand in their water-filled round bottom. The light filtered and refracted upon the globe into tiny rainbows. I smiled from seeing rainbows on my window. I was confident and in control of my small space where I wasn’t alone—I had all that was me huddled in a space surrounding me, reassuring me of who I was.

When I confronted my developmental lacking manuscript, I needed to tap into all that was me to guide me through newly written pages. I recalled my comfortable familiar as I once did in my bedroom closet and bedroom, evoking emotion of pleasure and happiness. The confidence and security felt while in small spaces reemerged in the drafting of new pages. My memories of being in these small spaces boasted large to get me through developing my story and calling it a memoir.

I held hands with my comfortable familiar as it continued to surround me in reassurance and security. I was sure to reach the finish line after mastering the hurdle of developmental editing. That day had indeed arrived.