I am a Southerner with a twist of the Great Lakes, a splash of the Pacific, a sprinkle of Latin America and a big dose of Europe thrown in for good measure. Born in Michigan, relocated to Hawaii, and finally planted in Atlanta, where I was raised, I spent most of my early life dreaming of anywhere but home.
As a child and young adult, I was a ballerina, a wild barrel-racing equine enthusiast, a writer of stories and poems, a journal-er of life (as I saw it) and a lover of books. I vividly recall as a child my mother taking us to the once-beautiful historical library on Carnegie Way in Downtown Atlanta. Its hushed hallowed rooms with tall ceilings met walls of bookcases laden with leather-bound volumes of great writings that captured my imagination. I would run my hand along the spines of the books, inhaling the aging pages of ink, longing to see my name among the authors that graced its shelves. In summer afternoons I would hoist myself into the branches of my favorite tree, where I had carved my initials with my pocketknife, settle back and read my latest treasure. Sometimes I would ride my horse, Freckles, into a distant pasture and spread myself across his back in the shade of an oak grove and read. These were my moments of Zen, alone within the pages of a novel, the fullness of my imagination taking flight.
But the overarching theme of my childhood, the one that would define my future, was that of being a child of a brilliant, chronically ill alcoholic father and a beautiful, gifted untreated codependent mother. The youngest of three girls, my role in the family produced a rebellious impulsivity that led me to early single parenthood while still in college but also birthed in me tenacity that has borne me well through the turbulent winds of life.
As an adult, European travels satiated my dreams, broadened my horizons and left me longing for more. My sojourns helped me see life through the lens of other cultures, other lands and their people. Whether I witnessed suffering or joy, I came to understand there is a common thread of human emotion that links all of us together, no matter how distant or how different we might appear at first glance.
Like all of us, pivotal moments on my journey have defined my life and given it meaning. The birth of my son forever changed me, as did my encounter with Christ at an early age. These two events, along with childhood challenges, drove me to seek answers to complicated spiritual and emotional issues that so many of us face. For the last thirty years, I have worked to understand the dynamics of addiction and mental illness in the lives of those affected by it. Through this process I have had to face life-and-death-struggles that, despite my history with my father’s addiction and my vivid imagination, I could never have even imagined.
Over the course of my life, writing has been a salvation to which I have turned since I was that small child in my parents’ home. I have poured myself out in poems and essays, in unpublished novels, in mailed and unmailed letters. In my professional life as a publicist for more than two decades, writing was a mandate, and thus I honed my skill of the story. But it has been the remarkable life of my beautiful son that has fanned my creative writing in the midst of every obstacle imaginable.
As a boy, on our frequent drives from Atlanta to Charleston for vacation, I would weave long stories to entertain his active imagination. Before Hurricane Hugo destroyed most of the structures on Sullivan’s Island, my son and I would drive from our home directly to our favorite hole-in-the-wall restaurant on the beach. While our fresh-catch dinner was being prepared, we would walk ankle deep in the waves, my son holding a 6-ounce Coke bottle as a microphone interviewing me about my latest novel. In his mind, I was already a great novelist though I had yet to write anything remotely resembling a novel.
As he grew, exploring a myriad of creative pursuits, I watched him have the courage to chase his dreams as I struggled to chase mine. I remained a publicist who published articles as a sideline, wondering if I had anything truly of value to say. “Growing up in the system,” a term I used to describe being raised in an alcoholic home, along with my resulting destructive choices, left me feeling unworthy to have the very thing I wanted, a career as a novelist. Throughout the years, my son has never stopped encouraging me to achieve my dreams. He has been my light; for that and so many other gifts he has given me, I am deeply grateful.
I have been a storyteller, whether in journals, essays or poems, oral stories woven for my young son, or corporate stories woven for my clients. At heart, I am a story girl. I write in hopes of understanding myself, my choices, life and the choices of those around me. I write in hopes of creating a story in which you, the reader, will find that common thread of the human spirit we all share: our longing for love and belonging, our struggle to make meaning out of suffering, and the brokenness we all endure along the way. In so doing, my hope is that you, the reader, and I, the writer, will discover how connected we are to our fellowman and find that we are less alone along our journey than we might imagine.
Chaos Theory is my first published full-length work of fiction. Drawing from my own life’s experiences, I have woven a story that I hope my readers will find engaging, funny, poignant…and ultimately life affirming.