A Feral Kind of Grace
An Introduction

I was a barefoot child with skinned knees and a bike. A dreamer. I spent my days wandering wooded backyards and whispering creeks, convinced the trees could talk if I just listened hard enough. I grew up in a house where silence was both sacred and suspicious, where love was present but not always soft. I learned early how to be useful. How to read a room. How to disappear—and still be watching. I longed to ride horses on the sand and hear the stories the stars were waiting to tell.
I learned to look.
I learned to listen.
I learned to fight.

In my teens, I wanted to be everything at once—pretty, smart, daring, good.
I failed at most of it. Spectacularly and often.
I fell in love too fast, burned too hot, gave too much, and had my heart broken twice into so many pieces I never thought I’d be whole again.

I wrote poems in the margins of my math homework and still day dreamed about horses and far away places. A testament to my math ability now. I carried secrets in my soul that I would whisper to the stars at night as an offering. I wore armor made of sarcasm and kindness, hoping no one would see how much I wanted to be seen and accepted.
I played sports, earned mostly As, and frustrated my teachers with my questions and inability to sit still. I stopped listening. I stopped looking. But I didn’t stop fighting.

I went to college at 17—young, free, and determined to be someone else. I rewrote my name and my story numerous times in the span of 5 years. Each fractured being still clinging somewhere inside me today. I had moments of great success… and moments we still don’t talk about when the family gets together. I don’t live with my regrets, but I have them. I came out mostly unscathed and mostly whole, and wholly scared of life in the real world.

Early adulthood didn’t make anything clearer or easier—it just raised the stakes.
I was more momentum than foresight. I got engaged, broke that off. I married too soon and I stayed too long. I made lifelong friends, and lost touch with the brokenness inside me. I gathered names and scars and learned how to leave.
I learned I was strong enough to be alone.
I went back to school, accumulated degrees and the debt that came with them.
But I also learned how to stay.

Somewhere in the middle of all that, I found my person.
Not the one I expected—but the one who made space for every version of me I’d been carrying.
The one who didn’t flinch when I unfolded. He wasn’t the person I wrote, he was the person I re-read. And I started listening again. I started seeing instead of just looking. I didn’t stop fighting.
But I did learn to let go.
I’ve learned to apologize. To move forward.
To move on.

And now?
At 47, I’ve made my home somewhere between squirrel whisperer, crazy cat lady, reluctant domestic goddess, and freelance adventurer.
I try to be a good neighbor—I’ll bring in your mail, water your plants, or loan you a cup of sugar.
But I also leave snacks out for the raccoons and possums. T calls it “yard garbage”. I refuse to rake leaves—for the bees, sure. But also because raking feels like erasing. And my weekends are not meant for labor. I have a menagerie in my yard and my own squirrel army. They have names. They know me, and I know them. One year, I had to apologize for the corn that started growing in random places around the neighborhood. I’ve since switched to peanuts.
They haven’t sprouted—but not for lack of enthusiastic burial.

I like things a little wild.
I thrive in the casual chaos I’ve perfected.
My garden is unkempt and honest but always full of mint.
My house is full of books, mismatched mugs, lonely socks, and stories I haven’t told yet.
I pick up a rock from every place I visit—and I can name them all if you ask.
I’m stitched together with equal parts wit, mayhem, grief, and grace.
I’ve softened with time.
But I still bite when cornered.

I write because I have to. There’s something ancient and restless in me that insists on being translated and heard.
I edit because I want to. Because I believe words can be shaped like prayers or knives—depending on what’s needed.
I never believe the work is done.

My writing lives at the intersection of memory and invention.
It is rooted in truth—even when the story is fiction.
Especially then.

I have an alter ego named Echo.
She reminds me to write when I forget.
She holds up a mirror when I’m trying to disappear.
Most days, she just reminds me to feed the squirrels.

This is where the stories begin.