Packed & Ready to go for 2.0…

Alltrails app at the ready ✔️

Baseball cap ✔️

Common sense ✔️

First aid kit ✔️

Extra layers ✔️

Granola, That’s it. bars, & hydroflask ✔️

Rx glasses & sunnies ✔️

Slathered sunscreen ✔️

Venturing ahead ✔️

Now that I’m packed and laced up, join me on the trail if you’re all about a sense of adventure, going left instead of right, and ready to navigate the unknown. 

The reason for this reset, relaunch, revamped version of the former me is hopefully that my treks: former, present, and future will resonate with all of you. And also a reminder that we get lost, seek shelter, veer off course, and eventually find our way again as we traverse trails

My only request is that you remember is one of my many mantras I’ll bread crumb along the way: your pace, your race. 

You, me, us, we have mostly been raised, convinced, indoctrinated to believe it’s all about who can cross the finish line as quickly as possible with every passion, purpose, and pursuit on our endless master lists. 

This was me.

After the summer of ‘93 backpacking throughout St. Petersburg, Russia to all the Scandinavian countries, ferrying to Greece, and Euro-railing through Austria, Italy, Prague, and hitchhiking (yes, it was safe then) from Cork to Dublin, I stuck with my plan to drive solo from my childhood home and playing-it-safe existence in Tustin and Irvine, California, to sight unseen Boulder, Colorado. I knew no one. I drove out solo in my used maroon Honda Accord with 100,000+ miles hankering for something more. 

At 5,280 feet I…

Enrolled in graduate school at CU Boulder. 

Interned at the Daily Camera.

Sleuthed for Paula Woodward at 9News.

Taught an introductory journalism class. 

Married the first native Coloradan I’d ever met. 

Earned my masters in three semesters.

I…

Didn’t stop.

All the while, harboring an upstairs neighbor unbeknownst to me. You’ll learn more about the unruly vagabond later.

When I couldn’t become pregnant I amped up seeking advice, answers, and a way to attain mom status. Instead, I was dissed, diminished, and demeaned.

Not realizing it at the time how the medical profession perfectly executed a master class on medsplaining with me as their involuntary victim, I took matters into my own shrugged shoulders and helpless hands. Demanded an MRI, which revealed the vagabond encroaching on my cerebral suite was in fact a baseball-sized brain tumor called a meningioma. 

Talk about veering off the course.

I didn’t just stumble off the trail. I was dropped into a crevasse I didn’t know existed. For someone who spent her life measuring success by elevation gain and miles covered, it was a gut punch. My compass was spinning. The medical 'experts' were pointing me in the wrong direction, leading me straight into a dead end. The motherhood summit I was aiming for was buried in a thick, suffocating fog.

It is easy to call hiking a metaphor for success. We talk about the steady incline, the vista, the badge of honor. But nobody talks about the moment the trail just vanishes. Nobody tells you what happens when you have to drop your pack and just survive. For a long time, I thought I had failed the hike.

But I learned something in the dark of that crevasse: the detours are not the mistakes. The detours are the story. My pen didn’t stop moving just because my feet couldn’t find the path. If anything, the ink started flowing deeper, darker, and with more truth than it ever did when the trail was clearly marked.

Why the relaunch? I have realized the trail is not a straight line. I am done apologizing for the switchbacks that took me into the shadows. Those logged miles defined the hiker I am today. I have learned how to write my way through terrain I was never trained to navigate.

The stories I am about to share is not about how I reached the summit. It is about how I learned to lace up and embrace my second chance at life again.

See you at the trailhead.