Well, here you are. Reading my words. I don’t think I ever thought that this would be real. I’ve come a long way from “I’m not an artist” to “check out my website.” But there are words I need to write. And I trust that someone (maybe you) need to read them.

I have an insatiable love for words and reading and a degree in English Literature to prove it. When I read, it’s Tolkein, Doerr, Austen, Dickinson, Cummings… good characters, good stories, poetry that touches the invisible parts of language and of the human experience and marries them with the natural world. I took a large left turn away from creativity when I got a Masters in Organizational Communication and spent 8 years teaching and administrating in higher ed. Some of my early work came from the unbinding that followed those years. (Read more about that in The Mother Tree, my debut poetry collection.) But here I am. Back to the written word, and boy, does it feel good.

I have spent most of my life in the upstate of South Carolina in the foothills of the Appalachian mountains, but I’ve loved traveling around America, into Canada (where I found a husband), and across the Atlantic to Great Britain.

I have endured many years watching my mother endure mental illness. My husband’s journey from international student to naturalized citizen was bumpy (looking at you, US Border Patrol). We are parents to three boys (which in itself is A LOT—of joy and pain). They were all born amidst uncertainty and not small dangers. One required me to have an emergency surgery. The other two spent time in the NICU. Life’s not all been rosy, but Hope has won out every time. Eventually. And I believe that it always will. My family is all healthy, happy, and whole. What more could a person want than that?

Thanks for being here.