Oldest of six children, I grew up mostly in western Washington. My parents divorced when I was in my early teens. For various reasons, I lived in foster homes for the last three years of high school. I met my husband when we both were seniors at rival high schools. We married less than a year after graduation and had the first of our five children when we were twenty-year-old college students.
Our life has been an adventure as we've grown up together (to the extent we've grown up at all!). We've lived in Washington state, Michigan, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas, and New York. We spent the early years of our marriage playing music together, leading the faithful in worship at churches across the country.
Sometimes I feel like I've lived more than one life during my lifetime. I've home-schooled my children, taught childbirth classes, given birth to my two youngest at home. We've cared for foster children. I've taught adult Sunday School classes and led women's ministries programs and workshops at homeschooling conferences. In my early 30s, I went back to college, graduating with honors at 35 with a BA in political science. Our family then moved from Nebraska to New York so I could attend Cornell Law School, and then to Dallas where I joined the major law firm where I became a partner a few years later.
Through it all I’ve had a passion for connecting with other women and communicating the lessons learned from both the small triumphs of my life and my terrible mistakes. I love to write, I enjoy public speaking, and my heart beats to encourage women — especially moms — as they navigate the often stressful waters of life as a 21st-century woman. So many women feel inadequate, insecure, and overwhelmed in their roles as women, wives, mothers, workers, caretakers, citizens. I don’t pretend to have the answers, but I love to share what I’ve learned, encourage other women, and see how we can help each other find peace and purpose in the roles that matter so much to us.
