A “talisman” is often defined as a magical object that brings luck or special powers to its owner.
If it is not obvious by now, maps, mind maps, charts are talismans for me. Being a visual person, these tools empower me to bring order to my life. It is how my brain works. Whether it’s a road atlas, a treasure map, or a topographic map, I love them all. Give me a map and I can do anything.
Maps give you knowledge, and thus, power. They show you everything that exists, where it is, how to get there. Maps make the unknown visible, clear, quantifiable, and possible. With a map…a plan, you can get anywhere you want.
So maps would become one of the key tools in my life, both for my journeys and my understanding. When I discovered “mind maps” I became a power user. Just a sheet of paper and some markers let me plan my life, a project, or my writing. And it all started with one Christmas when I was very young.
Mindmap by author
Back then, my world was often chaos. Given Dad’s unpredictable moods, it was impossible to know what to expect, understand what was happening or why, or use any logic to fight back.
But he loved Christmas time, and many of my gifts reflected his love for science. My absolute favorites were my chemistry set, a microscope, a dissection set, and my treasured rock chisel. It’s ironic, but many of the tools and strengths I would later use to survive him, and to eventually escape and rebuild me, were things he gave or taught me.
While those gifts would come later, at a very early age, one Christmas I got a map-making kit. My mind exploded when I saw what was possible to capture on paper! I loved that there were special symbols, a language to express your space in a consistent, 2-dimensional way.
There were symbols for open or closed doors, windows, internal and external walls, and such. Again, order out of chaos.
I immediately set about mapping my house. And there was no question in my mind but that the first room to do was Dad’s “inner sanctum,” the pantry, aka, his “ham radio shack.” That was a talisman in its own right, and I’ll talk about that next.
Given our small apartment, the room had to do double or triple duty. There was a washing machine under the pantry window and a shelf to its left that held the laundry basket and Mom’s enamel pot for baking. Under the counters were cabinets with canned goods, baby bottles, and the “rag box.” Across from his counter full of ham radio equipment was a linen closet, with a map of the world above it.
I loved that room, and so it made total sense that it would be the first room to capture on paper. I found it fascinating that in addition to the symbols, I could capture the size of the room. Something called a scale. Crawling around the edge of the room and under shelves, I used a ruler to take measurements, then followed the directions to figure out how many little boxes on the graph paper could represent that ruler. It was like magic!
It wouldn’t take long before I committed our entire apartment to paper, along with all the details of the symbols, distances, and objects adorning each room, right down to the shoes Dad left on the radio room counter that we were supposed to “spit shine.” And while I’ve long since lost that kit and those papers, it’s amazing how easily all of those symbols came back to me as I re-sketched this room and all the others.
Maps. Any kind. They are talismans that fill me with calm, peace, and order, and jar an infinite number of details stored in my memory. And one of those is that other talisman I mentioned – the radio shack room itself and those radios.
Soul Mosaic 
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