Growing up in rural southwest Michigan, I loved nature and spent as much time outside as possible. My dogs, cats, and ponies were my closest companions, and my canoe, butterfly nets, bicycle, and books about nature were my favorite possessions. My passion for the natural world set me on a science track in college, which translated to pre-med studies. During my first year of working as a medical student in the hospital, however, I discovered that I didn’t like sick people.

Dropping out of medical school, I married my college sweetheart and instantaneously became a sheep farmer in central Michigan. I went back to school to get an MBA. I thought, with medicine still on my mind, that maybe I’d like to run a hospital someday, but it was my teaching assistantship that unlocked the door to my real career. I loved teaching. I was meant to be a college professor.

I left my husband and the farm and began a doctoral program. I fell in love again, and I started my teaching career. When my new husband, the father of our two young girls, got sick, my family needed me at home, and I stepped away from my work.

After his death at the age of forty-six, I returned to teaching. Years passed. I fell in love again. My new partner moved in with her kids, but our two careers were too much to manage. I took a leave of absence and never went back.

I needed to do something. I’d always been busy---farm life, graduate school, teaching, and raising kids. Art was never in my life, but, somehow, the world of art quilts grabbed me. Why quilts? I’m still not entirely sure. I’d taken a basic quilting class when my husband was ill, but I’d never finished the project. I’d never had any art lessons. That didn’t matter, I just knew I needed to create them. The visceral joy I felt when I was making things was the confirmation. I’d rediscovered my purpose in life.

As a Master Gardener, I had taken all my artistic inspiration from nature. I’d always collected acorns and rocks and pinecones or any small token that caught my eye, gathering them in my pocket as I walked. Now, as an artist, I looked at them with fresh eyes. I began using my camera to get up close to my subjects, to understand the repeating shapes in nature, to absorb the color to reflect it back in my work. Life informs art informs life. I studied, and I sewed, and I began competing with my large tapestry-like pieces. Soon I was winning awards in national competitions, and I had my first solo show. My style evolved as I learned and grew.

And then, I got the call to write. What call? Who called? The call came from inside, prompted by the experiences I’d had, and the lessons I’d learned. My voice had things to say through the written word, insights which were different than those spoken in daily conversations. I started with a memoir, because, they say, ‘write what you know.’ But even with a completed manuscript I had shared with beta readers, I couldn’t find the right hook to unlock my story. So, I set it aside. In the meantime, my partner had gotten laid off from her corporate job. We moved from Michigan to a remote town on the Oregon coast. Not surprisingly, the move generated even more words, as everything was new again. The idea for a novel about a woman at a transition point in her life came to me. With that, the story flowed out.

Visual art. Written art. It all comes from the same creative well of inspiration. It is both a journey and an escape. Every morning I awake filled with a sense of purpose. I can’t wait for the discoveries to come as I get busy and go to work.