6. Tell us about you. What is your background or why are you passionate about the subject matter?
Entertaining through storytelling has always been a big part of my personality. As an unruly teenager, I remember skipping class to hang out in the high school bathroom where we would smoke cigarettes and play cards. We’d sit cross-legged on the floor and admire each other’s fingernail polish. Sometimes we’d put the polish on our cigarettes and smoke it.
This was my first audience. I remember sharing a story about how I unexpectedly encountered two rabbits flirting - how adorable it all seemed until their gentle nose kisses erupted into fervent thumping and then humping. I can still hear the walls echo with laughter as I described the force and speed of their flamboyant act.
But life brings lessons. As I evolved, so did my stories. When I started my blog in 2003, its purpose was to keep my son’s memory alive. I wanted the world to know that he lived and that he was good. I wrote about his struggle and untimely death. I wrote about how it broke me open – wide and deep. I wrote about my guilt. The weight and crush of my guilt. I left nothing out.
But life brought more lessons. Just when I thought my focus was connecting with and comforting those who experienced the loss of a child, I developed my first cancer, and then another and another and then another. Seven in total. And the middle of all that, I wrote about the betrayal of my husband - someone I first met in kindergarten. Someone who was not just the love of my life but one of my only reasons to live.
Dating was cringeworthy and comical. My stories were at times explicit, but always vulnerable, raw and real. Those two rabbits served as mascots for the calamity I encountered over the next decade.
I am the collection of my experiences. My experiences have brought me incredible growth and insight. For the first time in my life, I see the peace that no longer waits for me. It is in me. It is all around me.
And with this peace comes joy.
This is my purpose.
This is my podcast.
