Oh the Gifts!

by Nancy Casey

Imagine yourself with unlimited power and unlimited wealth. That means you could acquire everything that money can and can’t buy. Imagine the gifts you could give!

You could give gifts to your friends and enemies. You could give them to plants and animals. You might think a new cushion would be a nice gift for a chair. A house might appreciate the gift of a new roof. Maybe you prefer to give gifts to yourself.

Your gifts don’t have to be tangible. Because you are so powerful, you can bestow gifts like confidence, or the ability to play the piano. You can change the past and bend the future. What gifts might you give that would do that? Who would you give them to?

Today in your writing, imagine yourself as a great giver of gifts.

Before you begin to write, set up your page. Draw a line at the top where the title will go. Set off any size space for illustration or doodling. You can fill up that space first while you are thinking up what to write. Or you can fill it up after you have finished writing, while you wait for a title to pop into your mind.

Then begin to write.  You could start with a sentence that has the form:

To _____ , I would give the gift of _____.

After that you can add other information, such as what the gift will change, how the receiver of the gift will react, or the history of the gift itself.

You might have so much to say about one single gift that you fill up the whole page explaining it. Or you might think up so many gifts to give that you can only write a few words about each in order list them all.

When the page is too full to hold any more gifts, go back over your work. Make small changes if you need to. When you are satisfied with the page, give it a title and write the date on it, too. Here is an example of what someone could write.

You can share your work by posting it as a comment below. You can type it in, or take a photo of it and upload the image.

Nancy Casey has lived in Latah County for many years. You can find more of her work here. She taught the Write-For-You writing class at the Recovery Center last summer and will return again in the spring. For more information about classes and writing certificates, contact Nancy or the Latah Recovery Community Center.