When I read and heard that our time here at Cape Fear Voices is coming to an end, I was sad. I have always had a love for writing back to when I young. Let me take you on a little journey.

I was in middle school when I learned how to write sentences and short sentences. I credit my teacher Josette for making me fall in love with English and writing.

In the spring of 2019, two and half years after we moved here to Leland North Carolina from New Jersey at the end of 2016, my mother and I see an advertisement that a new program the Next Chapter Book Club, a reading group for disabled adults was starting in Brunswick Forest by Dr. Thomas Fish a retired professor from Ohio State.

I immediately fell in love and am still a member today and our book club will be starting its seventh year in existence.

Instantly Dr. Fish takes me under his wings and has me edit and write a short story together Shelia’s Revival which we shared here at Cape Fear Voices.

Small world, shortly after our book club started, we get new facilitators, one of them is Teena Miller who was a neighbor of Eric Mens, and she tells me that he was starting a free newspaper Cape Fear Voices in which people could share stories and articles and get experience being published.

She immediately told Eric about me and my love of writing and that is how I became a member of this newspaper Cape Fear Voices, and it has been a blast and a time of a lifetime.

There have been many great memories I have had during my time here at Cape Fear Voices such as being featured our book The Great Lockdown Of 2020 and being featured on the front cover several times, however there is one moment that tops it all as my greatest memory.

In the very beginning days of this newspaper, Eric would give us a monthly writing topic. One that stands out to me. It asked us to write about our best summer.

I took a unique and different approach as the summer I chose was the summer of 1988 when I was just one year old.

People would wonder why I would I pick a summer that I would barely remember. However, something happened that summer that would change my life forever.

I developed seizures as a baby and struggled through my first year of life with them. My parents went to several different doctors and were searching everywhere for the right solution, when they discovered the Ketogenic Diet.

The date was August 17, 1988, when my doctors put me on the Ketogenic Diet and it immediately stopped the seizures and still to this date, I have never had another seizure in my life. Which means I have been seizure free for 37 years and counting.

I wrote a short story about this experience titled My Best Summer. In 2020, Cape Fear Voices hosted their first ever banquet awards and I had no idea it was going to be a night I would never forget.

Eric gets down to the Category of Perseverance and reveals that my story My Best Summer won the award for perseverance. He then calls me up on stage and hands me a beautiful trophy in which I still have on top of our piano.

That night will be a night I will never forget, and it goes on the long list of the many successes I have made in my lifetime from overcoming seizures, going to mainstream high school for junior and senior years after being in special education from preschool, graduating high school and college, being featured in the Coronavirus book and winning the award for Perseverance.

As Eric always kept telling me, to keep writing Brendan. And I plan on keep on writing as my life story is one that people will want to read about.

I plan on asking around and I am certain that I will find that next person and next opportunity to keep my writing going.

So, this may be goodbye, but I am sure this will not be goodbye forever as I always say, follow your dreams, cause your dreams will take you very far.

Don’t worry, be happy, stay optimistic, keep the faith and always believe in your heart that everything will turn out good in the end.