This is for creative Therapy catalyst
eleven.

Here’s the journaling:
You gave me the love of words.

My first memory ever is of you sitting on our parents’ bed and reading
the newspaper. I was so envious, I asked you to teach me to read, too.
And you did. One letter at a time.

Yona, you may not know this, but you gave me the biggest present anyone
ever gave me. You gave me the love of words. Over the years, through
sad, boring, and even happy times, I always had books. It didn’t matter
where I was, with whom I was, or what I did. As long as I had a book or
two, life was swell.

Those few hours we spent together opened up an entire world for me. It
became my best escape. My way of falling into other people’s lives. My
way of living, loving, learning. My favorite thing in the whole world.

I went through a tough childhood and didn’t have a lot of good friends.
But I always had books. I lived vicariously through so many of them. I
still remember how you drove me to bookstores far away just so I could
pick my favorite books. I remember how much you supported my love of the
written word. From that first memory and onward.

Over the years, many things about me changed. But not my love of
reading. I still read two books a week, most weeks. I still crave the
words, the stories, the lives that I get to experience. I still carry a
book with me everywhere I go. It’s still my very favorite way to relax,
escape, and to feel happy.

I want you to know, Yona, that I owe it all to you. To that moment when
you didn’t tell me to leave you alone. That moment when you let me lie
there, next to you, on Mom and Dad’s bed, and showed me how to read each
letter.

You gave me the love of words, my sister. The best present I’ve ever
received in my whole life.