Originally from Pennsylvania, I was born with a spirit for adventure, gifted to me from my mother’s mother & a respect for staying in one place, gifted to me from my father’s mother. My mother allowed me to venture outside & explore, instilling independence & courage in me from the beginning. My father taught me the importance of the traditional heritage of hunting & fishing, as his father had taught him. 

I was raised to be curious & with a deep respect for other humans, wildlife & the land. I’m empathetic to a fault, have the bold mouth of a sailor & love painting my eyelashes on rare occasions. I’ve never worn enough sunscreen, love sending & receiving mail (handwritten please) & one day, I hope to have a crowded table. I’m a beginner & enthusiast of many things: crochet, learning a second language, film photography, scuba diving & growing flowers. It’s a rare day I’m without a notebook & a pen.

I believe words found their way to me & to capture them before they escaped, I kept a journal. I wrote out my dreams, my hopes, my fears & initially, the ongoings of my youth. I put timelines on years of my life with ages for specific events such as marriage & motherhood, hoping that my path would stick to the straight and narrow. Very little has been straight or narrow & I’m grateful for this truth.

At the age of 10, I fell instantly in love with the west & the vast fields of sunflowers that seemed to go on for miles during a visit to South Dakota. A decade later, I moved to Montana, the place my heart felt at ease & at home. Even after moving abroad for education & international service, every time I’ve made my way back to Montana.

I’ve worked across sectors & lived across contexts, on multiple continents. These experiences have shaped who I am, my values & yielded a woman who is hell bent on sharing dialogue & building cohesion & connection through positive relations. At my heart, I strive to be a bridge builder & have training in conflict resolution & peacebuilding. I am a person who understands people. I highly value the individual, unique experience it is to be human & I am a lover of open spaces, flowing waterways & big wide skies.

Some of the greatest lessons of my life are these — that there is movement found in staying in a place & strength found in moments of vulnerability & the road home is a complex mess of dirt bush paths & paved roads. Words create grace & magic. I often think in poetry & know nothing sweeter than when the right mix of words spills out of me onto the screen or becomes inked on the page. 

I live with my husband, our son & our bird dog in Montana & I respectfully & gratefully acknowledge that I live, work, hunt, fish & grow on Indigenous lands. I recognize the traditional owners & custodians of these unceded lands, the Blackfoot / Niitsítpiis-stahkoii, Métis / Michif Piyii, Crow / Apsaalooké, Flathead / Salish Kootenai, Cheyenne, and Očhéthi Šakówiŋ peoples. I honor their deep knowledge & ongoing stewardship of the lands, waters & wildlife that I call home.