What it means to be a writer

I'm a country girl at heart. I was born in Welland, Ontario (Canada) and raised nearby in the small town of Fenwick. 
Growing up in such peaceful surroundings, sheltered from the rest of the world, it was a sanctuary of sorts. At least it probably was for my parents. Me? I thought it was the most boring place in the world as a teenager. 
There was 'nothing to do' but use our imagination...and work in the garden.
I met my husband-to-be at the age of eighteen, at nineteen we married and moved away. For twenty-six years we moved around our great country but it wasn't until I turned thirty when my father passed away that I learned to appreciate the lessons I'd learned growing up in that 'boring little town'. 
That was the year my love for gardening was born...again...as a tribute to him. A way, albeit a small one, to pass something Dad loved on to our children. It took longer for me to recognize my love of writing, my NEED to write. 
I'd spent a great deal of time as a kid writing poems, letters, whatever I was in need of at the time, without a thought then that it was something I HAD to do. I've always kept a journal (although I throw them out when I've filled one - who really wants their 'feelings' sitting around in books for someone else to read after we're gone?). Ideas for books would flit about in my head to be dismissed by my own negativity...after all, who was I to think I could write? 
As one by one my sons grew up, running their own lives, writing was what I turned to, to fill in the gaps, and I realize, at the age of fourty-eight, that writing is as much a part of me as breathing. My love of family will always come first, but my writing is a very close second and always will be whether or not I am ever a 'published' author...but getting published would be icing on the cake!