my eyes could stay open

the official bio:

Rocky Callen is a critically acclaimed author, speaker, and writing consultant. She has hosted writing workshops and retreats from Washington, D.C. to Bali and has spoken on regional, national, and international stages on writing and books, mental health, and art and social impact. She is the author of the YA novel A Breath Too Late (Macmillan), which was named a Kirkus Reviews Best Young Adult Book of the Year and was featured in The Mujerista's 2020 list of the Ten Best Young Adult Books by Latinx Authors.

She was a contributing co-editor for the mental health YA anthology Ab(solutely) Normal: Sixteen Stories that Smash Mental Health Stereotypes (Candlewick). Her latest YA novel, Crashing Into You, received two starred reviews. She recently sold her first two picture books to Simon & Schuster. She founded HoldOn2Hope, a project that unites creatives in suicide prevention and mental health awareness.

I started writing stories when I was very little. I’d sit behind my grandfather in a worn green armchair and watch as he typed away at his desk. By then, he wasn’t publishing books anymore, but he still showed up to his desk everyday to write his stories. I wanted to do that.

But words didn’t always feel like friends.

I remember sitting in a circle on a scratchy rug in second grade waiting my turn to read from our class’s book for the day. The teacher had cotton ball hair, a round puff of white. She slapped rulers on desks and had eyes that bit with a blink. As I waited, I tried to practice my part, because fitting the letters in place in my brain always took me longer than the other students. When it was my turn, the room turned quiet and I stared at the page and struggled beyond the first three words.

The weight of the stares around me, the embarrassment felt like rocks that only weighed down the words in my throat more. They wouldn’t come out and when I took too long, the teacher yelled, “Skip!” The baton was passed. The next student read my lines with a sing-song voice. I remember sitting there in a puddle of shame, of not enoughness. Reading quickly became a foe in my daily schedule.

the long story:

there is bravery and vulnerability in people coming together and sharing their stories-

But then something happened.

I transferred classrooms. There, my new teacher sat with me and showed me tricks to make the words make sense, ways to throw the rocks away. I went from struggling to keep up with picture books to reading William Golding’s Lord of the Flies in fourth grade. After that, books became not just my friends, but my saviors.

Because what my first second grade teacher didn’t know is that I flinched at slammed doors. Yelling made me climb inside my head and shut my eyes. But with reading, words became my refuge because my eyes could stay open and I could climb into stories that took me far, far away.

Something happens to a child when they feel who they are is wrong, is skippable, is not enough. Those feelings tangle up in thoughts and dreams and strangle them and they start to build their perspective of self on a cracked, sinking foundation. A teacher, a kind and patient teacher, showed me how to fill in those cracks. Stories showed me how to fill those cracks. People who love me show me that still.

The reason why I write for young people, often young people who feel alone, misunderstood, not enough, or different, is because I remember what it was like to feel so alone in all of those feelings myself. For me, writing and reading are ladders out of lonely dark places, but also the cement to help fill the cracks so the ladder has a solid place to rest its feet.

That’s the same reason I speak and mentor. Because there is bravery and vulnerability in people coming together and sharing their stories and I want to be there, creating those safe spaces, witnessing people claim their voice and power on the page and in the world.