I was born in Davenport, Iowa, and grew up in rural McCausland, IA, population 300.  

I lived on a long dirt lane off Gravel Pit Road in a double-wide trailer the color of lemon pie.

Everywhere you turned, the cornfield sea.

The tall pines, the rippling gold fields, the shimmering halos of gravel dust that trailed in the wake of rumbling, clanging dump trucks – it was, all of it, fairy land to me.

My father crafted me a swing by hand in his workshop. He hung it from the limb of one of our big, old shade trees.

That swing was my view of the world, my way into it, my wings, as I sailed into the blue depths of the Iowa summer, my bare feet dipped in the evening tangerine sun, melting down the face of the sky. Swinging my way deep into the kingdom of stars.

On my swing, or cradled in the hollow of my favorite tree, I read every book in the Ramona and Anne of Green Gables series. My love and gratitude, always, to Beverly Cleary and L.M. Montgomery, for creating lifelong friends, for us, the tribe of lonely girls, who dream in swings and read in trees.

My sister and I spent most of our time outside, playing kickball and hide n go seek, splashing bikes through mud puddles and collecting agates from the lane, with each other and the neighbor kids.

This might have saved our lives.

My family later discovered, after a series of debilitating, mysterious health ailments that could not be diagnosed or treated by medical professionals, our lemon pie trailer was poisoning us.

We were Jehovah’s Witnesses, and our faith community didn’t believe we were sick. They rejected us.

You can read that story here.

Chronic illness, a punitive religion, and family turmoil created countless hardships in the journey of growing up.

Homeschooling through high school, isolated in the countryside of rural Missouri, I began writing in earnest. I sent my stories into the world, messages in a bottle, a way to be seen and heard, to love the world I couldn’t be part of.

At age sixteen, my first short story “Uncle Timothy’s Ships” was published by Merlyn’s Pen. The story fell into my mind in one piece while standing outside on the rain slick porch, after a storm, witnessing a rainbow unfold itself over my head. “Uncle Timothy’s Ships” is still used today as a reading assignment in classrooms, a fact that astounds me. My voice was heard, and a story I told persists, across time, and minds I will never know, but have touched for good, I hope, offering beauty. This is why, writing is sacred magic to me.

I met Aly my first day of college at Southwest Missouri State University, when he stole my seat. I was terribly annoyed, and then, in the next instant, enchanted by him. Here he was, against the odds, the book-loving kindred spirit I’d spent my childhood praying would arrive. The only problem…Aly was a devoted follower of the Pentecostal-Charismatic church, the extreme opposite of the Jehovah’s Witness faith. We butted heads constantly, yet, we were so in love, we couldn’t stop talking, trying to make sense of our vastly opposed belief systems. Aly tried out door-to-door preaching as a Jehovah’s Witness, and I endured some painfully awkward speaking-in-tongue moments at his church. Over the course of five years, we both left our respective faiths.

I celebrated my first birthday at the age of 27. Aly placed a “1” candle on my cake. I exhaled my wish. There I was. A new arrival in the world.

Now, I think of myself as coming-of-age, at last, in middle age.

I have a lot of work to do.