Everyone has a dream. Something they wanted to do or be. Only their relatives, friends, teachers, and others tell them it’s not possible.

I read a post on Bored Panda the other day where someone said that parents need to stop telling their kids that they can do anything. They said that if little Johnny had trouble with math that he would never be an astronaut.

Well hell, I was told by teachers that I would never write a book. Relatives didn’t want to hear my stories and would even waylay those that did. Could I spell? No. Did punctuation confuse me? Sometimes it still does. All I really needed was the right person to explain things to me in a way I could understand. I joke about not speaking Oxford-English, but it’s true. I learned the majority of my English skills off Schoolhouse Rock as a kid and it took decades for me to get the help I needed. In the meantime, I read a lot of books and continued to write my stories in my head, only sharing with a select few.

As a child, I had a dream of writing a single book. I’ve since written over thirty and have a small following.

There’s a lot of excuses people try to make for discouraging someone. They’re just trying to help. It’s going to be tough, and so-in-so won’t be able to handle it. I don’t want them to get hurt.

Jealousy could also be an issue. How dare that person change and leave me behind.

Stop squashing peoples’ dreams and ideas just because you can’t wrap your head around how they can do it. Why not help. Or pose the question of, how they’re going to work around the obstacle in their way and come up with creative ideas. Maybe someone else already figured it out.

If people would stop telling others that they can’t do something, there would be more Terry Pratchetts and cool stuff in the world.