Spring 2026: Echoes

Sometimes a single choice drastically alters the course of a life. Sometimes a series of small choices, linked together, gradually point the direction. Do you ever look back at the choices you made and wonder how you got here? Or was there a single moment whose impact is still being felt? Maybe you’re still young with many choices still to come, trying to see the different chains lying ahead.

 

Maybe it wasn’t a choice at all but an accident that severed your life into two parts, a before and an after. Dealing with the “after” has consumed your life in ways you never imagined.

 

How did your family affect you as you grew up, for good and bad? How about later, when you could choose your family? Did you find a partner to spend life with or are you still looking? Maybe you’ve decided on something else entirely. Perhaps a surprise pregnancy derailed your plans, or maybe it was something you fought hard for. How did your children mold you and inspire you while you thought you were molding them? Or did you choose education, travel, and career instead?

 

How did your best friends come into your life? Most likely it was because of where you lived or where you went to school. What if you had been somewhere else with a completey different set of friends? Who have you missed out on? No matter what we experience in life, we won’t meet everybody or experience every possibility. Instead we accumulate our own unique set of experiences.

 

We explore the theme of chain reactions in our Summer 2026 edition of Inkpot. Ponder with us on how one decision or one event led to another, whether it changed us all at once or bit by bit.

 

J. Audrey Hammer, Inkpot Editor