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My story is a wonderful adventure and a magnificent love story of a young woman from Neenah, Wisconsin who gets to live a very big life.  I took a leap of faith to travel to a third world country for someone I loved.  Some would say I was so adventurous!  But when we are young, it doesn’t always seem that way.  The world is open to us… and fear is masked by our eagerness to learn and our capacity for adventure.  That’s how it was for me.

I left Neenah after high school to go to the “big city” of Milwaukee when I was 18 to attend Prospect Hall, an all-girls school.  I met a handsome man from Beirut, Lebanon attending the Milwaukee School of Engineering, and I fell in love.  It was complicated, as his parents were not going to allow their son to get involved with an American common girl (much less a non-Muslim) so they took him back to Lebanon after graduation.  But somehow, they were unsuccessful in getting him to forget about me, and five years after we met, he came back to the U.S. and asked me to marry him.

So there I was, engaged to an Arab, whom my parents liked very much.  They knew I would leave and they knew I would become a Muslim in order to marry him, as Lebanon did not allow mixed marriages between religions.  I was raised Roman Catholic, but they supported me in my decision.  They let me do what I needed to do.  I think they knew I would do it anyway.  And I guess they figured I would not change who I was.  They had given me a very solid foundation.

Beirut, Lebanon

When the time came for me to leave, I flew out of Outagamie Airport (Wisconsin) and landed in Beirut, Lebanon – only to find that the runway was being bombed! This was the beginning of the 1975 Civil War in Beirut, and the beginning of my incredible journey.

I knew that adapting to the culture and customs was critical if I was to grow, thrive and be happy in my new home, and learning the language was paramount to being accepted.  So I embraced the Muslim culture immediately.  Flats in Beirut were very expensive, so Maher and I started off living with his family.  This gave me an opportunity to observe and learn about Muslim life close up, and to begin avidly learning the Arabic language.

Maher’s parents, M’Nouman and Abu Nouman and their maid, M’Saad, welcomed me into their home from the day I arrived, introducing me to their culture and habits and helping me to become familiar with my new world.  From them, I learned the exquisite traditions of the Arab world, and the warmth of “Ahalan wa sahlan”, welcoming people to your home.  I had never seen such friendliness and warmth – men holding hands with other men and women holding hands with other women – just because they were friends.

I was also thrilled to discover the richness of Beirut.  At that time, Beirut was known as the “Paris of the Middle East” – for its culture, but in particular for its food, and the care that went into the preparation of that food.  The shopping of fruits and vegetables was a serious, almost exalted activity; and the cooking and eating was equally so.

But Beirut was also a battleground at that time.  There was often bombing or fighting in the streets.  I had many harrowing experiences during this period of time, including diving to the floor in our home as a sniper aimed through a kitchen window.  Amidst this chaos, Maher and his family tried to carry on as normally as possible, so I did the same.

In between the bombings and gunfire, I was able to marry the man I loved in Beirut in that summer of 1975.  On the morning of my wedding day, Maher’s mother sat beside me on my bed and welcomed me as her third daughter.  It was a simple ceremony in the living room of my in-laws’ house, presided over by a Sheik, in the presence of my husband’s family and two witnesses.  I wore a blue silk dress and carried a red rose.

At first, I was disappointed that the ceremony was so informal – no white wedding dress – and no women allowed except for Maher’s immediate family.  But I loved my husband.  I had received only warmth and support from his family.  And I was determined to learn and accept the customs of the Muslim faith.  The day, it turned out, was as lovely as I could have hoped.

It was also an opportunity for me to understand a bit more of the traditional marriage relationship.  The Sheik that day explained to me – translated by one of our witnesses – that in the Muslim faith, the husband is entirely responsible for the wife, and she is not required to do anything to earn money.  A symbolic gift (usually money) is made to the bride both at the time of the wedding and shortly after, to provide for her in the event of divorce, since no money will be given to her at that time.  I was asked how much I wanted, and could in fact have asked for any amount.  What I asked for was 10 pounds sterling, about $15.00.  As the gift was symbolic and I was a modern woman, I did not see the need for more than that.  Besides, I did not intend to divorce.

United Arab Emirates

By the end of the year, Beirut had become increasingly dangerous, to the point that we had to leave.  Our lives together took a detour when a welcome miracle happened.  Maher’s company offered him a posting in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and we jumped at the opportunity to move to a safer environment and a different culture.  UAE became our home until 1985.

The difference between Beirut and the UAE was stark.  Whereas I had known a lot about Beirut before leaving the U.S., I knew nothing at all about this desert country.  It was the home of Bedouins and 99% Muslim, and was very strict in its religious observance.

But it was safe.  Once again in a new part of the world, in the city of Sharjah (and later Abu Dhabi), I needed to establish to everyone that I was going to stay and be a part of their country – I was not just a visitor or a foreigner.

Although my husband was an Arab, we were both pioneers, since the UAE was in its infancy in development – no roads yet (camels and Bedouins walked down the center of the main street), buildings were just going up, electricity just coming to the city as well as running water.  I had long hair but learned to take a shower in less than 3 minutes, as I knew I’d be out of water after that.  These were not easy times, as the UAE is an extremely hot and humid country with temperatures in excess of 120 degrees.

Establishing myself in the UAE meant going on my own to the “souk” or marketplace.  It meant trying out my Arabic and bargaining with the locals.  I still remember taking a deep breath the first time I approached the souk.  Remember, I stuck out like a sore thumb – there are no naturally blonde Arabs!

But the souk was delicious, a feast of colors and smells which I devoured before getting down to business – with a big smile, of course.  The merchants waited for me to start – and I bargained like my life depended on it!  They were delighted, and it was an immeasurable triumph for me.  I savored it.  It was my true beginning in that country.

That same day, on my right, two British ladies who didn’t speak Arabic were paying ridiculous prices for their fruit.  I looked at my vendor, and he smiled a mischievous smile.  I smiled back at him and didn’t say a word.  In the end, I became the darling of the vendors, and earned the nickname of “nos ou nos” – half and half.  It was a great compliment.

Although these early years in the Middle East were certainly challenging, they were also an exciting adventure for me.  I was fascinated by the cultures and traditions, and thrilled by all that I was learning.

Leaving the Middle East

Sadly, however, there came a time when my circumstances became less enchanting.  After two children – a boy and a girl – and several years together with Maher, my marriage was no longer a good one, and my husband no longer recognizable as the man I had married.  He had changed, adopting a repressive version of the Muslim culture, instead of the beautiful one I loved.

And I changed too.  How could I not?  I was no longer adapting to my adopted country.  Everything was harsh – harsh, where before it been a pleasure for me to acclimate.

I was in a country where women had no rights, a third world country where anything I said was disregarded without a thought.  I was in a country where women disappeared in the desert never to be heard from again.

My life was in imminent danger.  I was no longer permitted to come and go as I pleased, and had to be escorted everywhere.  I now had to cover my legs, and be different in ways I never had to be before.  I was a prisoner in my home and my husband became abusive when I did not adhere to his wishes.  I knew that I could not survive another episode.

And the American Embassy would not help me.

I had to make a decision.  Should I give up and live this way?  If I did, what would it mean to raise a daughter in that country?  What would it mean to raise a son in that way?

And if I decided to do something, how would I do it?  Making a decision is one thing, figuring out how to do it is another.

My answer came from within.  I had to draw from myself.  I had to dig deep and believe I had the answer.

From that moment on, everything I did had a purpose and a reason.  I got out of bed in the morning with a purpose; I got out of bed in the morning because I believed in myself; I got out of bed in the morning because it felt right in my gut.  It was inside of me and I had to work it outward to everything I did in order to escape with my children, as I was not going to leave without them.

So I planned my escape.

I knew I had to leave when my husband was on a trip and actually on a plane in the air where he could not check on me.  He had eyes and ears on me during the day.  So it would have to be in the dead of the night.

But before any of this could happen, I also had to be a very good actress.  He had to trust me enough to travel again.  He believed I would try to flee to the U.S.  He said we would never let me return there – ever.

So I became very obedient.  It pleased him and I could see a change in him.  I started receiving my dozen roses every week like before.  I never contested him and always did as I was told.  He would test me with his words, and I would never react.  I became completely subservient.  I prepared for the flight, so that when the time came, I would be prepared to leave.

There was one false trip that he planned and I passed that test.  It didn’t feel right – my gut told me he was lying.  I couldn’t afford to make a mistake because if I did, I might never get another chance.

Shortly after that, the time did come again for another trip.  He was leaving for India – he gave me just a few hours notice.  I felt it was right.  I had everything in place – except one thing.  I still had to get our original passports.  They were in the safe in my husband’s office.  Imagine everything in place but no passports.

I had a plan.  And that part of the plan didn’t work.  I was in front of the safe in the middle of the night, with the taxi outside waiting for me and my children. And I couldn’t open the safe.

Then I looked at my 5-year-old son, Manar.  I had many times seen him replicate things that he had watched others do only once before.  I asked him if he had ever seen his father open the safe.

He said, “Sure Mom.”  He spun the two large dials.  It clicked and he stepped aside to let me pull open the heavy door.  There, on top of a mound of cash, both dirhams and dollars, were our three passports.  Carefully, without touching a dirham or dollar, I took out our passports as if they were solid gold.

There were four checkpoints I had to get through in order to get to my plane in Abu Dhabi.  I used my Arabic and my charm as a young, blonde, American woman to get through them.  There is no way I should have been able to do that since I was supposed to be accompanied by a male family member.

Once on the plane, I got through to the pilots to explain the danger of my situation, and to ask for their help.  Our flight went through London to Chicago and then Outagamie Airport in Wisconsin.  My greatest fear was that my husband would find out that I was gone and search for me in London and if not there, then Chicago, and take us back.

In Chicago, the police escorted us personally to our plane for departure to Outagamie Airport.  My family had arranged for this, unbeknownst to me.  When we arrived in Wisconsin, my entire immediate family was there.  Even as I deplaned with Nadine and Manar, I was searching to make sure there was no private plane ready to whisk us away.

As far as I know, I’m the only woman to make it out of the Middle East with her children without professional help.  It was November 16, 1985 and there was a slight smattering of snow on the ground.  A moment I will never forget.

I believe anyone over the age of 40 understands that life does not always end up the way we thought it would.  But that doesn’t negate all the good that happened along the way.  My ten years in the Middle East were rich in experience and learning.  I loved living there.  Believe me when I say that I am still pulled by the heart to the country that I loved and learned so much from.  But it was time for me to leave.

Since coming back to the U.S., I have shared many happy stories about that time with my children, who encouraged me to write them down so that they would not be lost or forgotten.  I have finally done that, in my book Pulled by the Heart.  It began as a labor of love, for my children, to recount to them a piece of their own history.  But it turned into an educational tool, a means of sharing with others my experience of the Muslim culture, and what it was like for an American woman to live in the midst of it for ten years.

When I began giving lectures and attending book signings, one of the first questions I was ever asked was, “I have not yet read your book.  What is it that I will find most surprising?”  My answer: “How much I loved it.”

I learned a lot about myself when I had to follow through on the decision to leave my husband and the Middle East.  I learned that you absolutely can do what needs to be done to make your life and your relationships healthy and whole, in spite of the obstacles stacked against you.  You will know that it is right by the feel of it – that sense of something good and respectful that comes from following your true self.

Cooking as a Career Path

I was always interested in food because my mom was a really good cook and we ate really well.  She always laid a beautiful setting and used good, local food.

But I was actually unsure what I was going to do with myself.  I was working at a restaurant, a summer ski camp restaurant, and a woman who was working with me said, “The movie business is starting to build in Vancouver and they really need catering.  I’m wondering if you would come and be my assistant because I’m going to start a company.”  And I said, “Sure, I could do that – you know, until I decide what I want to do at university.”

It turned out that I loved it!  It was interesting and fun.  Eventually, I left her and went out on my own and ran my own movie business catering company for twelve years.  It was a great kind of cooking because unlike in restaurants, the menu is up to you every day, you make whatever you want to make.  It was a great way to learn to cook.

Then I decided to go to a cooking school in Paris, the École de Cuisine la Varenne.  So after I had almost been a self-taught chef, I went and became a chef, went to school, got a diploma.  The experience in Paris was fantastic, although I think I learned a lot of my craft on my own, just from reading and loving to cook and running my catering company.

So that’s how I got into cooking, just kind of by fluke.  And when I went to the cooking school, I met all sorts of people from all over the world who were chefs and caterers, and I knew that was definitely how I wanted to make my living.

The Cookbook Story

After I married my husband, we continued to live in Vancouver.  Mike worked in the ski business and I kept working as a movie and film caterer.  So he was working away and I was catering away, and then one day he got offered a job in Nelson as manager at the Whitewater Ski Resort.  So he moved to Nelson, and I soon followed him, giving up my movie business catering company.  In Nelson, I started another business called Pink Peppercorn, a catering company for weddings and parties and Christmas events.

Within a year, however, the ski resort was in danger of going bankrupt, of just being shut down, and there would be no more skiing for the Nelsonites.  So we got together with a group of ten other local businessmen and we put in an offer and bought the ski area, the group of us.  It was risky, we were taking a big, huge gamble, buying into a ski area that depended on things like snow and tourists and maintenance and staffing. It was a great big unknown.  But we bit the bullet and decided to buy into it, and therefore Mike was able to continue on as manager.

And because my background was in food, I took over the little cafe at the resort, which at that time was a little, basic, fries-and-hot-dog-and-hamburger cafe.  I just knew there was no way I could go from my background in catering to being satisfied with running a basic cafeteria.  So I turned it into the Fresh Tracks Cafe, a trendy little upscale cafeteria or cafe similar to what you would find anywhere in a big city, with interesting food and everything homemade – all of the soup stocks, even the burger patties and the baking.  Everything was made totally from scratch.

After a while, we built a reputation, and people started to come to Nelson not only for the skiing, but also almost as much for the food – it seemed like they fell in love with the food.  And I began to have some great interviews – I had one with Sunset Magazine and the New York Times, and a huge one with More Magazine.  It just grew from there.

And then customers and friends started begging for the recipes.  They would say, “Can you give me the recipe for this or that”, and at first I was writing out the recipes by hand and giving them out.  But I was doing this so often, I finally just decided, with my friend, Lori McGuinnes – it was actually her prompting – to put them into a book.  We had kids the same age, and we were standing outside the school one day and she said “Shelley, you have got to get the recipes from Whitewater and put them together in a book because everybody is wanting them all the time.”  She said “I’ll help type, I’ll do anything it takes to get this project going.”

So I went through the task of figuring out how to write a cookbook.

I started out by just taking a recipe I loved from Whitewater and turning it into a recipe to serve eight instead of 200.  Then I would test it and test it, and then I gave the recipe to Lori, and she would type it out and start the file, and that’s how the first book – Whitewater Cooks: Pure, Simple and Real Creations from the Fresh Tracks Cafe – got started.

Then I went out and found a designer – actually, I went through a few different designers – to help turn my recipes and photos into the text you need to send to the printer. I found an excellent girl, she was freshly out of graphic design school, only 23 years old, and so talented and sharp.  Her name is Minn Benedict.  I went to her with my huge box of files and I said, “Here’s my work, what do you think?” Together we came up with a look that we really liked, and from there we just worked together, on each recipe.  It takes a long time.  You have to make sure each recipe fits the page, everything looks the same, decide how the picture layout will be, how many pages per book, etc.

The photographer, David Gluns, had never done food before either – he was a sports photographer – so for him the food part was really fun and challenging.  He would come over and I would take food out of the oven, and I would have all the different setups lined up – all the different plates, lighting, tables, napkins – and he would take probably 100 photos of each dish. Then we would go through the hundred photos and pick one.  Our criterion was always, “OK, which picture makes you want to eat that the most?”

It took a year, but we did it, we put it together and got it published.  Then all the books arrived, and I was pretty nervous because I had no idea if ten were going to sell, or 100 or zero.  I think we had 5000 books in the first printing, which seemed outrageous.  But it arrived in December 2006, and they all sold, I think within a couple of months or maybe six months.  It was obvious that people were loving the recipes.  So I just kept printing them.

And then about a year later, I would be walking down the street in Nelson or wherever, and people would tell me, “Time for another cookbook!”  So I made another one – Whitewater Cooks at Home.  And I thought that was it, two was it.  It’s a lot of work.  It definitely takes a full year of testing and developing the recipes, doing the photographs and everything.

But the second one was so popular, that last year, I made a third – Whitewater Cooks with Friends.

The Ski Business Story

When we bought Whitewater, were very young and we couldn’t even borrow any money from the bank, so we had to find private funds.  Even my father thought it was nuts – we asked him if he would co-signed the loan and he said, “No way! I’m not helping you with a ski area.  Do you know what a risky business that is?”

But my husband is a very good businessman.  He had a degree in business from Carleton and also took the ski area management program at Selkirk College.  We also had the support and encouragement of a friend of ours, Tex Mowatt, who actually discovered Whitewater, is a very good businessman and used to be the mayor of Nelson.  He really convinced us that this would be a good move for us.  So although we were nervous because we had no idea what would happen – and we did have some tough times – we decided to rely on Tex’s advice and my husband’s knowledge of money and business and ski areas, and just go for it.  But it was scary, because I think I was only 27, and he was 32.  It was before we even had our kids.

The next big decision of our lives came after seven years of owning the ski area with ten people, when my husband and I decided we wanted to own it on our own.  It was just becoming complicated – every time we wanted to change something, it meant we had to get together with ten other guys to make a decision.  So we took another big, giant gamble in our lives, again on Tex’s advice.

He said “Mike, Shelley, I think it’s time that you guys make an offer to the other owners that they can’t refuse.”  And he was really right, that was the way to do it.  We made an offer to each of the ten guys to buy them out.  And they all said yes.  Each of them got quite a nice little chunk of money, because we wanted to make sure that they were not just selling because we want them out, but because the offer was fair.

Then we took over, just Mike and I, and it was just the two of us to run it and talk about it.  And for about the last 12 years, it was the only Ma-and-Pa owned ski area in North America.  He did everything with the lifts and in the downstairs, the accounting and everything, and I ran the upstairs, bar, cafeteria, retail-type stuff.  And we got excellent managers underneath us.  We sort of divided up the business that way, went to work every day, ran our little business, and the kids were up there all the time.

Then, about three years ago – we weren’t actually planning to retire yet, we were going to work until we were about 55 and 60 – but some really great guys from Calgary came along, three guys that loved skiing, and had families and loved Whitewater.  They’d been going there for years as customers, and they said, “We really want to own this place.”  They made us an offer, and after not much negotiating, we said yes.

We love these guys that took over, they’re the best thing for Whitewater and the locals love them.  They put in a new lift and they kept all the managers that worked for us, and they’re totally happy with them.  So that was really good news.

And Mike and I have become really good friends with one of the couples.  We went to Italy with them in the spring, and we just came home from Banff where we went hiking together and went in a bike race with them.  They are great people and we are thrilled that they are the ones who took over our business.

Family Life

At Whitewater, the kids would come up skiing on the weekends, and it was fine.  The only hard part was that we always had to work Christmas, spring break and weekends throughout winter, so our kids’ Christmas was that Mom and Dad go to work in the ski area. Which was fine, we just didn’t get to go on any holidays like regular families or take weekends off.

But we had a little trailer up there that was really cozy and cute.  They would come up and go skiing, and when they got tired of skiing they would go hang out in the trailer with their friends and watch TV or read or eat fries or get out of their ski boots and just kind of wait until we were finished work. It was probably a bit frantic for them at times, especially at Christmas because we were pretty busy and preoccupied.

But the great thing was that I never worked a single summer in their whole lives.  So from the time they were babies to teenagers, summers were always just me and the kids, and Mike could take most of the summer off.  So that was a real bonus.

I’m sure when they look back on some of the winters, they probably think, “Wow! My parents were frantically busy!” But because we were at a ski resort, they skied – especially my son, he would just come up and ski all day anyway. My daughter didn’t love skiing as much but she stayed home and she probably liked that too, to have the weekend with us gone and her girlfriends there. That was just our lifestyle.

When it came time for us to sell and we had an offer, we asked both of them if they want to take over, and they said, “No way would we want to work as hard as you guys!”

My son is 21, he’s in physics at McGill, so he going to be a physicist.  And our daughter is 22, she’s at UBC, taking political science and thinking possibly to become a lawyer. Totally opposite to what their parents did. You never know what your kids are going to turn out like.  But they didn’t want to be self-employed ski area managers like us.

Both of my children have all three of my cookbooks in their kitchens in their houses, and that’s the food they like all the time.  My son will make dinner for all the guys in his big, goofy house of guys, and my daughter will make delicious healthy things, so for them it’s a gift.  They’re used to watching the whole process, and they both ended up being very good cooks.  And they like having a collection of their mother’s recipes.

The Rewards

If it hadn’t been for Whitewater, there would never have been a cookbook.  And if there hadn’t been the first cookbook, there would never have been the second, or the third. And the exciting news for the third is that I’m actually just in the midst of booking a plane ticket, because the third one has been voted in the top three books in Canada in the Taste Canada Culinary Writing Awards in November. I’m super excited!

I had entered the first two cookbooks and they didn’t even make the top ten.  I entered the third one in October when it came out, and on January 1, I found out it was in the top 10.  Then, on August 1 when they announced the top three, I went onto their website and there was my little name!  I was thrilled, I could hardly believe it.  So I and my husband and the kids and lots of girlfriends and all the people who helped work on the book, we’re all going to the big gala awards on November 5 in Toronto.  I’ll find out between 6:30 and 7:30 that evening who is the winner.

It’s pretty exciting because it’s almost like the little cookbook that could.  The whole thing was totally not preplanned, absolutely not.  It went from, “Oh, let’s put some recipes together,” to being one of the top three in Canada.  Except I kind of almost hope I don’t win because I’m not a very good speech writer!  I’ll have to get some help from somebody.

Mostly, though, the part that I love is knowing that, now that there are probably a hundred thousand of my books out there, there are a lot of people making those recipes that I love too.  Those are my favorite recipes that I put together in the books, and it’s fun to know that they’re all out there having happy, yummy, successful lives in all sorts of situations from weddings to potlucks.

I get emails all the time saying things like, “Hi Shelley, I’m having a shower for my daughter and we’re making everything from the Whitewater cookbooks.”  Or I get emails from the nutrition department of the Lions Gate Hospital saying, “Hi Shelley, just wanted to let you know that we recommend your books for healthy eating to people who come to us for nutritional advice”.

Here’s a funny story about my Hungarian Mushroom Barley Soup.  Last week we were mountain biking on Vancouver Island.  We were up at the top of this trail, just sitting at the top – there’s this bench where you can rest before you ride down – and this woman came out of the bushes with this huge, beautiful basket of mushrooms she had picked.  I looked at her – she wasn’t a cyclist, she was just his gal coming out of the bushes with a big basket of mushrooms – and I said, “What beautiful mushrooms. What are you going to do with them?”

She said, “I’m going to make this really good Hungarian mushroom soup.”

I asked her, “Does it have sherry and sour cream and paprika and fresh dill and lemon and barley?”

And she said, “Yes, it does.  It’s a recipe from the Whitewater cookbook.”

It’s a really funny story to me because we really were out in the middle of nowhere.  And here’s this gal, just popping out of the bushes, and that was her intention in picking those mushrooms, to make that soup out of my cookbook!

Life After Whitewater Resort

I’m fairly busy with the world of bike riding now, and we have a fairly active outdoor life.  My husband races a lot in the Masters cycling races, but we also have been going in all the Gran Fondo series races, in Kelowna and Whistler and Penticton and such.  And last year we did a five-day bicycle tour in Italy.  We also go to Europe in the spring now that we’re retired, to train, train, train, and then we come home and go in as many races as we can.  We also to do more hiking. We’re pretty active now.  It’s marvelous to have the time. And I have the kids that I go and visit.

My cooking now is very simple and quick.  I usually know in the morning what we’re going to have for dinner and I have it marinating.  I’d say we eat at home almost every night, especially in the summertime when the kids are home and I want them home for dinner.  I announce in the morning what we’re eating that night and they say, “OK, see you at six.”  So every night at six our kids are home at the dinner table, which I love.  I still really like food and I still put effort into having a good dinner every day.

And actually this year we had a lot of work done on our house so we were making lunch for painters, carpenters, etc. We had a long table outside with an umbrella and we’d all sit down in our working gear and eat a very healthy, lovely lunch. It was very fun, actually.  I loved feeding them lunch.

New Projects

I’m planning a fourth book, starting in January.  I think it’s going to be called Whitewater Cooks for Life. It’s going to be my healthiest one yet, lots of gluten-free, wheat-free, and vegan recipes.  It will still be based on using fresh and healthy foods, but a little more geared towards people who are wheat-free, because that’s the way we eat now.  We are doing cooking all the time now that doesn’t involve wheat and it’s actually pretty easy. So there will be one more.

And it’s the same team exactly, the same designer, same photographer, and my friend and assistant Marianne Abraham.  So we’ll all be back together working on this in January.  I think it should be coming out in November.

But I’ve also started something else right now that I’m excited about.  I’m going to bottle some of the sauces and dressings in my books, like the Glory Bowl, which was really popular.  We’ll be working on that in the next couple of months, so soon it will be on the shelves and people will be able to go out and buy their favourite sauces from my books without having to make them.

Personal Qualities That Contribute to Success

I’m super hard-working and energetic.  With employees, I’m very caring and open and honest, and I let people have lots of freedom at the same time.  I think I’m pretty fun and creative – I think fun really works in a kitchen because kitchen work is really hard.  And I think people liked the fact that I cared so much that the food was delicious.  If the staff can see that the owner really cares, then they’re going to follow in those footsteps and do the same thing.

Looking Back

I don’t know if it was our intention to create such a unique life for ourselves, but it sure worked out, for both Mike and I.  You know, he’s a business degree guy, he could have been an accountant in a brown suit.  Instead he was a ski area manager in a really nice ski suit, skiing around.  We’ve had a very nice life of work and raising our kids in this little town of Nelson.  Neither of us would have ever guessed that we would end up in a small town like this but now we’re hooked, we love it here, we have lots of friends and we live right on the lake in a cute little house and that’s where we plan to live forever.

Now that we’re retired, we look back and we think, “We had a really good job.  That was a nice way to spend 30 years of our working life.” It really was.  I’m really fortunate that my life turned out to be that way, that all those working years and kid-raising years were spent doing hard work but in an environment that I love.  My job was two things I love, cooking and skiing. I don’t know how often that happens to people.

When we moved from Montreal to Canmore, we transitioned from a neighbourhood that was predominated by double-income, professional households, to a community where many mothers have left paid employment to dedicate their time and energy to running their family. Different lifestyles and life choices. And to be sure, these different choices produce different outcomes in things like the income level of the family and the pace of life in the home.

But do they produce a “better” family, or happier people within the family, one way or the other? When we were in Montreal, we knew families that were functioning pretty well, despite fairly hectic lifestyles involving full-time work hours by both parents. We also knew families that were divorcing, or had discipline problems with their kids, or were struggling with simmering issues of one kind or another. It was all over the map.

Here in Canmore, where lifestyle choices tend to be highly family-oriented, I have not gotten the impression that things are substantially different in this regard. I have not done anything like an empirical study. But there are happy families and divorcing families and struggling families here too, in proportions that do not seem to me to be dramatically different from what we saw in Montreal. It’s too bad, in a way – because wouldn’t you like to think that there is a formula you could follow? Wouldn’t it make things easier to know that, as a general rule, one way works better than another?

I have come to believe that at the end of the day, it does not have to matter who does what within the family. It is not necessarily so important which tasks are performed by who. What matters is that you have a negotiated agreement as to how the labour will be divided, and that everyone is reasonably comfortable with the terms of the agreement. Over time, the agreement may come to be less satisfying to one family member, or less well matched with the family’s needs, and then it needs modification. The transition phase provoked by that development can be a challenging time in the family dynamic. But still – it’s the existence of an agreement that everyone can live with that matters. Not so much what’s in the agreement.

The agreement that works for my husband and I (at least for the moment) is one where we both try to do a bit of everything. We both work. We both prepare meals. We both drive the kids to soccer practice, or shop for their clothes, or listen to their triumphs and complaints at the end of the day. Either one of us might shovel the driveway or review our investments or return the library books. This works for us (most of the time) because of who we are and how we are each wired.

Of course, we do not each do all of these things in equal measure. Each of us is naturally better at or more interested in certain things, and as a result we tend to do more of those things because that’s what comes easy. Plus, on any given day, one of us may be more available than the other to attend to certain things. But we both know that if one of us isn’t around to make a decision or take care of something, the other will do it, no matter what it is. Because it doesn’t always matter who does what. It just has to get done, and making sure that it does is valuable to our family.

It takes enormous energy and commitment to run a family. For most of us, it is the biggest single project of our lives, and by far our biggest investment. Yet sometimes, because it is so all-consuming, we need to step back and get a little perspective on just how much we are doing and how essential all the little pieces are to keeping things moving forward. Consider, for example, the following inventory of “jobs” within a family:

• If our kitchen was a restaurant, there would be a chef, a dishwasher, a waiter/waitress, a busboy and a hostess.

• If our house was a hotel, there would be housekeeping staff, laundry service, grounds-keepers, a maintenance crew, porters, and a concierge to greet new arrivals and give wake-up calls.

• If our family was a business, there would be a book-keeper, an accountant, an office administrator, a controller, a purchaser, an events coordinator and social convener, a sales and marketing department, a CEO, and definitely – definitely – a human resources expert.

• If our home was a hospital, there would be doctors and nurses, social workers, therapists, pharmacists, nutritionists, bed-pan emptiers and vomit cleaner-uppers. And they would be on-call 24/7.

• If we were a consulting firm, we would offer services in life skills coaching, motivational speaking, personal training, spiritual guidance, project management, financial planning, interior decorating, fashion consulting, security, self-defense, and career counseling.

• And somewhere in there, there would be taxi driving too.

Whatever the division of labour in your house, whatever portion of the breadwinning, nurturing, cooking/cleaning/homemaking falls to you, it is important to never lose sight of the value that your contribution makes to the well-being of your family, both as a unit and as individuals. Negotiate an agreement with your spouse, if you haven’t done so already. Re-negotiate it if necessary as needs and resources change. But always keep sight of the importance that your efforts make to the family machine. And then keep doing them.

So on this Mother’s Day, don’t be shy to soak up the appreciation that you are (hopefully) receiving from those around you. You very likely deserve it. But in addition, accept some appreciation from yourself. When you believe in the importance of what you do, you feel a stronger sense of reward for doing it, and may even end up feeling motivated to do more of it. Which is good for everyone, including you. Because, like Mom used to say, “you get out of it what you put in.”

Happy Mother’s Day!

Other things are new – like being able to throw our canoe on the roof of the car and be lakeside in 15 minutes.  Or running into pretty much the same people with every new activity we get involved in, and realizing it’s because the town is just that small.  Or snow before Hallowe’en.  Or finding elk tracks in the snow right around the corner from our house, and then later meeting the elk who made the tracks, and a few of his buddies, standing in the road while I’m on my way to get groceries.

Elk tracks

This sort of thing definitely did not happen back in Montreal.

Another thing that didn’t happen often back in Montreal was getting to see my sister.  One of the very best consequences of moving is that I now live close to her.  I use “close” in a relative sense – she is still three hours away by car, but then again, she used to be three provinces away, so the improvement is exponential.  Plus, the three hours does not seem like it will be an obstacle – we have already seen her five times (yes, five) since we got here, and all indications are that the trend will continue.

To know how special this is, you have to realize how long it has been in coming.  The last time my sister and I lived in the same province was more than 20 years ago, when we were both still in high school.  Back then, we had spats like all siblings, but mostly we liked each other pretty well.  At the same time, though, we were teenagers, so (surprise!) maturity was sometimes lacking – on my part as much as hers, even though I am four years older.  Looking back, I would have to say that our closeness was a kind of unspoken, nebulous thing – there all the time, but only occasionally crystallizing into something more tangible, and probably half scaring us when it did.

At least, that’s how it strikes me.  My sister, who is a kinesiologist and not a literature graduate or a silver-tongued lawyer, may have a much less airy-fairy take on these things.

Either way, the point is that although we were close, it was in a youthful, unevolved kind of way.  Because we were youthful and unevolved ourselves.  And when I left to start university, I must admit that I was so eager to get out into the great big world that I left without really looking back.  My sister, in time, left home and went her own way too, and although we have a good relationship, opportunities for getting a little clarity on that nebulous closeness thing have been rather few and far between.

So now here we are, twenty-some years down the road, and much, of course, has changed.  Most pertinently, we are both fully and properly adults, with husbands, kids, mortgages and grey-covering dye-jobs to prove it (it’s true, I am not a natural blonde).  Presumably, we have both matured.  I’m sure our relationship has too, though the truth of that will show up over time as we get to talking more and more in person about the kind of stuff that doesn’t tend to come up so much when you talk over the phone.

Because the reality is– and I’m seeing this clearly as I spend time with her now – there is just no substitute for time together.  Twenty years without seeing each other very often means that what we really know about each other has more to do with who we used to be than with who we are now.  We both know the facts of each others’ adult lives – where we’ve gone, what we’ve done, who’s been with us while we’ve done it – but there is another level of knowing a person, beyond the facts, that is harder to develop without time together.  It’s a sensory thing – a felt understanding – that feeds on physical proximity.

My sister and I now have a chance to pick up where we left off twenty years ago and develop more of that felt understanding.  Hopefully (surely!), we are evolved enough to be more conscious and unbefuddled about things than we were as teenagers.

There is a lot we can learn from each other, about the hows and whys of choices we have each made and the directions we have taken.  For instance, I have placed a lot of focus on work and career, while my sister chose to leave practice as a kinesiologist to redirect her energy to home and family.  In a way, this is not a surprise, because it was always clear my sister had more homemaker instincts than I did (I have many times been thankful to live in a time when a woman’s worth need not be measured by the quality of her embroidery or the flakiness of her pie crust).  I think we are both good at what we do, and largely satisfied with our choices, and that by itself is a meaningful topic for conversation.

Another thing that has happened in the last twenty years is that my sister has become the superior athlete out of the two of us.  This was not the case when we were kids, when I tended to be the one playing almost every sport going, while my sister had more interest in music and art and just being with friends.  Today, I still play some sports in a leisurely, recreational kind of way; my sister, though, has run marathons and triathlons and recently completed a 100 mile bike ride (a “century”, as it’s called) through the Rocky Mountains, probably without even breathing that hard.  She is strong.  She trains almost every day, and could leave me eating dust, hands down, no contest.  Who saw this coming?  Maybe she did.  Maybe she knew where she was going all along.

But I think most of all what we have to talk about and feel our way through is our families – the new ones we have created with our husbands and children.  Because this is something that, as teenagers, we could not possibly have known anything about, and it is the thing most fundamental to who we have each become.  So naturally, this is fertile ground.  Plus, it happens that our families are great and we are lucky to have them, so how could we help but talk about them?

So we will see how it goes.  We will see whether geographical closeness, so long in coming, can contribute to closeness of another kind.

Why are we doing this? Not because we are crazy (at least, not primarily). No, we have a better reason. We are doing this because, whether we were ready for it or not, Moving Day arrived. Bright and early yesterday, we said goodbye to Montreal, my home for the last 20 years and my husband’s for even longer, and headed west to a new chapter in our lives in Canmore, Alberta. And although we could have flown out, we decided to make it more memorable (this may be the crazy part) by turning the moment of transition into a family road trip.

The day before yesterday, we signed over the house at the notary’s office and came home to watch the movers stuff every last bit of life as we know it into their monstrous, 53-foot truck (I am happy to confirm that no neighbourhood vehicles were crushed in the maneuvering of that beast). We said goodbye to friends. We threw out an unspeakable amount of garbage. Then we picked up fast food and camped out on the carpet in the basement for one last night in the old house.

In the morning, while we packed the car, neighbours came by to wish us well – the next door neighbor who will herself be moving in less than a month to a new house closer to her daughter and grandchildren; the family across the street whose daughter just earned a place on the national cycling team at the same time that she ploughs her way through med school, and whose son, the same age as my daughter, is showing all the signs of following in his sister’s footsteps; the neighbours beside them that we didn’t know well but whose friendliness was evident from the smiles and small talk exchanged when we crossed paths on the street.

And we were treated to eggs and coffee at the home of the neighbours we will miss most, a couple with strong opinions, warm hearts, and two children slightly younger than ours. One last lively debate across their dining room table. One last frenetic playtime between our two sons, who have inexplicably chosen these last couple months of our time in Montreal to suddenly develop an intense friendship. A few tears were shed as we got into the car. And then we were off.

I must say that it is no small thing to leave all of this behind. We will miss these people and places that have been the everyday fabric of our lives. And we sincerely hope that, technology and travel being what they are today, many of the goodbyes we said in the last few days were really only see-you-laters.

But, emotional baggage notwithstanding, we are now on the road, and that means we have to figure out what to do with ourselves, crammed into close quarters for hours on end. After all, ideally we want this trip to be memorable for all the right reasons, and not for all the times we wanted to throttle each other. One of the distractions we have resorted to is the old stand-by – music – with a 21^st century twist.

Among his last-minute errands yesterday, my husband stopped at an electronics store and picked up a gadget that lets us plug an iPod into the cigarette lighter (surely a misnomer in this day and age – when was the last time someone actually lit a cigarette with one of those things) and use an FM channel to play downloaded music over the car speakers. Cool, no?

So we have been swapping music. Styx and Eric Clapton were followed by my daughter’s favorite from the Black Eyed Peas. Amanda Marshall and Boston tag teamed with Akon, Katy Perry and Avril Lavigne. We all belted out a Maroon Five hit, and then mellowed out with the Eagles. Alice Cooper seemed only appropriate, school being so recently out for summer. My husband’s favourite from Ozzy could not be left out. And my son, though mostly over his Spiderman fascination, has requested Chad Kroeger’s movie theme song six times and counting.

When even the music could no longer keep us from wilting like daisies, we stopped for the night at a not-so-new road-side motel off highway 11, north of North Bay, Ontario. It was the only thing we had seen for about 75 kilometers, and an internet search didn’t give us much hope of finding anything else soon. Notices in the room indicated the tap water was not drinkable, and the room smelled of cigarettes, even though a no smoking sign was prominently displayed. But the folks running the place were friendly, and the restaurant served good home cooking that settled well in our bellies after a day of in-car snacking. All part of the experience, we told the kids. Just roll with it. And, great kids that they are, they did.

At midnight, my husband and I groggily came to, trying to grasp what all the banging and commotion was about. Then we remembered it was Canada Day. The motel owners were exploding fireworks, literally right above our heads. We were too tired to go out and watch – though considering the timing for us, the celebration felt almost personal. The kids slept on, unperturbed, completely oblivious to the noise.

One thing is for sure – with a start like this, the road ahead promises to be anything but dull.

Maja’s Story

I was the born in 1928, the seventh of eight children in a small town in rural Denmark. My father was a kind, clever man, who ran a good farm and loved children. My mother was always busy, and took pride in keeping a lovely house and garden. She always had a hired girl to help look after us younger children and do other housework, which believe me was not a luxury but a necessity, for she had to serve three meals a day, plus three coffee breaks, for our family of ten and two live-in farm workers.

Although this was in the early days of electric light, there was no electric power to run appliances or machinery. Most farmers took their grain to the miller, but my father was fortunate enough to have a huge windmill built into the farm building. On windy days, there was no time to waste, we had to mill as much grain as we could before the wind died down. Even the females in the house had to help out. I remember how proud I was when I was big enough to help too.

Like many children in that time, I went to school from age 7 to 14, learning reading, writing, math, geography, Bible study and Danish history. I enjoyed school, but also liked life around our home, so I did not mind when I finished my seventh grade and schooling ended. After that, I helped out my mother more at home, and sometimes went to work for other families who needed hired girls like my mother did.  I was also able to spend time with my closest sister, Ingeborg, and my brother Vestergaard, who was five years older than me but had contracted polio as a baby, which paralyzed both his legs. Vestergaard went to a school in Copenhagen where he learned business skills, including English, but when the second World War started, he had to come home.

Here’s me, on the right, with Ingeborg.

I married my husband, Carl, in 1948, when I was 20. Carl was a man driven by ideas – about politics and economics, about farming and the banking system – and I think it was his passionate talk, as much as anything else, that attracted me to him. We tried to make our living as organic farmers, particularly of potatoes, which is a staple food in Denmark. We worked hard to grow those crops without artificial fertilizer from bags . I helped Carl with the work in the fields, bringing the children with me in a carriage. By the time we had been married five years, we had four little girls.

But organic produce was not fashionable in those days the way it is now, and within a few years it seemed like we owed money to everyone. And it was getting worse. One day Carl came home with a new cow that he had borrowed money to buy, and then he sold the cow to pay off another debt. I didn’t like the way things were going.  I wondered how we would ever get out of that hole we were in.

Immigration

That’s when Canada come knocking at our door. The Canadian government was inviting immigration, with a promise of a loan to help us pay our way across the ocean and assistance finding work once we got there. Carl was passionate once again about the prospect of new opportunities, and it seemed exciting to me too. So we sold everything and paid off what we owed. The few essentials that we took with us were packed into two suitcases, and two crates that Carl had made, which were really four bed-frames turned bottoms-up against each other. Then we boarded a ship in Arhus harbour with our four daughters and $100 in our pockets. That was 1957.

We landed at Pier 21 in Halifax, and managed with our little bit of English to pass through immigration and get on a train to Toronto. We did not have a clear destination, but had heard of someone finding work near Niagara Falls, so we thought we should try to go there. But in Toronto, an immigration officer told us to get off the train and directed us to a man waiting with his truck to take us to his farm. So we ended up settling in the rural country north of Toronto, and Carl started work on that farm the very next day.

For the first few years, Carl worked as a farm hand and we lived in small houses on three different farms where he worked. At the first farm, the house had been brought in by truck and dropped into the farmyard.  It had two rooms – one living area and one bedroom – with a woodstove for heating and cooking, a cold cellar dug out underneath, and a cistern to collect water for washing. Drinking water came from the pump in front of the one-room schoolhouse that was just over the fence. Our two oldest girls went to school for the first time (in the Danish system, they were too young), and the two youngest stayed home with me. I pulled them with me in a wagon when I planted and weeded our small garden with vegetables just for ourselves. But I did not have to work in the fields as I had done in Denmark. Carl was paid $125 each month, which we lived on and managed not to run up any debt.

I was happy in our new life. We had been lured to Canada with the promise of a job and a place to live, and we had that right away. Our children picked up English quickly and found friends at school. We had two more children, both boys, during the seven years that we lived on those farms, and although there were hardships (the children suffered with some truly mean and unpleasant teachers; Carl often did not like the dirty, heavy work or agree with the philosophy of those he worked for) everyone was healthy. We even bought our first car, a big black Ford, for $150, with a $60 down payment that came from our first baby bonus cheque three months after we arrived in Canada. In Denmark, we did not get baby bonus, even though we paid plenty of tax.

Our Canadian Homestead

Then in 1964, after Carl had an argument with his boss, we turned a new page and moved to a Canadian homestead of our own. The house sat on two acres of land, part way up a hill in a very small town (we used to say “don’t blink or you’ll miss it”) called Zephyr. We rented it with the option to buy, and did end up buying it about a year later for $10,000 that we scraped together by borrowing from Carl’s brother in Denmark and one or two other friends. It was a big, airy country house, in need of repairs, but all ours.  We moved in at the beginning of July with our six children (ages 15 to 1 year), three Saint-Bernard dogs that Carl had started breeding, and our few belongings.  By the end of the month, we had a seventh child, a girl. Our eighth and last child, a boy, was born two years later.

So many memories are tied to that house in Zephyr. It is where our youngest children spent all their growing up years, and even our oldest children called it home for at least a little while before they married or got jobs.  When we bought it, the land behind the house was just overgrown field, with a few old cars and other junk sitting on it. Over the years, we cleared it and turned most of it into garden (organic, of course), where we grew most of the food that fed our family all year round. For a couple of years, I planted large sections of it full of cucumbers and sold them to Bicks for pickles. We also raised goats and chickens, and Carl built kennels and bred more Saint-Bernards, which he entered in shows, and they won him a few ribbons.

Carl tried a few different lines of work to keep us afloat – first, working shift work at the Deerfield Plastics factory in Newmarket, which he disliked intensely but stuck with for six years, despite how difficult it was for him to sleep during the day with the house full of kids.  Then he tried selling insurance, but quickly found that didn’t agree with him, and luckily he soon came across a job in landscaping. He ended up doing landscaping for the rest of his working life, eventually taking over a small business and running it until he retired.

In Zephyr, our social life also expanded. On the farms, the handful of people we knew, other than the farmers Carl worked for, were mostly other Danish immigrant workers, some single, some with families, who were doing the same thing we were doing .The farms were not very close together, and Carl did not have many days off, so there were not many opportunities to see other people. Our children didn’t know a lot of other kids, and mostly played with each other.

But in Zephyr, for the first time, we had the chance to be part of a Canadian community. The local elementary school was still small, with only three classrooms. But the high school in Uxbridge was much larger, and our kids made many friends there. Even in Zephyr, there was a baseball league in summer and an outdoor skating rink in winter; there was a 4H club, which several of my girls joined, and which I even led for a while. There was a church, which some of us attended more or less regularly. And there were neighbors, living right beside us all up and down the street. I was finally able to really improve my English!

By 1986, though, it was again time for change. All of our children had left our big house on the hill to take flight into their own lives, and Carl’s tired body was ready for a rest. So, with the help of our grown-up children, we packed load after load of our belongings into the back of two pickup trucks and whatever cars our family had, and transported everything, including the piano, over dusty country roads to a three-bedroom, split-level home hidden among the trees in a nearby town called Pefferlaw. We even brought evergreens from our nursery, and roses, and a big pile of our homegrown compost.

Although this was retirement, we still kept active in the garden club and the literary club, and I joined a Tai Chi group. Of course, we kept a garden at the house, which still fed much of our needs for most of the year. And, with several of our children still living within a couple hours’ drive of us, we enjoyed many family occasions and visits with our grand-children (15 of them) and eventually great-grandchildren (eight so far).

Loss and Renewal

Early last summer, my husband Carl died of bone cancer. We did not know about the cancer until just a couple of months before he passed away, but he had been badly arthritic and unwell in one way or another for some time. I took care of him at home, and at the end, he died in a hospital bed set up in our living room with the sunshine coming in through the big front window. His ashes are buried beneath a tree in Zephyr. We had been married for more than 60 years.

So now, at 83 years old, I am in transition again. I am blessed with strength, good health, a large family and enough money that I don’t have to worry. What will I do next? I am waiting for the right direction to present itself to me, as it has always seemed to do in the past. For the moment, I am simply enjoying life. Tai Chi is still keeping me limber, and I still enjoy my garden, and meetings with the garden club and a craft club that I have recently joined. I email regularly with my family everywhere. I have made trips to visit some of my children and grandchildren who live farther away. Soon I will make another trip back to Denmark to visit with my sister Ingeborg and some of the younger generation over there. There is plenty to do.

If I have any advice to offer, I guess it would be to keep things simple.  Enjoy your family, and don’t spend money that you don’t have. Respect nature. Take care of your health. Those things are what’s most important in life.

Like the title says, it’s about women, and about the lives they live. Not famous women, necessarily, or spectacular women, but ordinary women, like you and me, and like your mother, sister, daughter, neighbor, colleague, teacher, student, friend….

It’s also about the pieces that go together to make a life, and how each of us chooses to arrange them. Pieces like love, family, money and health. Work and marriage.  Children (or not). Your past. Your future. Your self-esteem. Sex. Faith. Education. Loss. Etc .

Imagine sitting down to make a list of all the elements of your life that are jostling for time and space and attention, both inside and outside of you. Imagine taking the time to think about how all these pieces fit together, and how they have come to be arranged in the way that they are. (Imagine you had the time to do that – it’s a stretch, I know, but bear with me…)

Now imagine that lots of women you know and even more that you don’t all made their own lists. Imagine getting the chance to look at their lists, and hear them talk about why their lists look the way they do. If you like the sound of that, stick around.  Because that is what I hope to do with this blog.

Next, a bit about me.

Let me tell you first of all what I am not. I am not a psychologist or sociologist or any other kind of -ologist who would be qualified to counsel people or give advice.  So I will not attempt to do those things on this blog.

What I am is a woman, like most others, with a few pieces to my life.  For example, my life includes two children, one husband, a chronic illness (Crohn’s – his), a career path (mine) through law, technical writing and other detours,  aging in-laws, three divorced parents (one deceased and one I have not seen since I was five), a large, extended Danish-immigrant family, a more or less regular jogging-and-pilates exercise habit, a dream (that is far away from realization) of one day writing novels that someone will publish, and an upcoming move half way across the country.

I also have friends and acquaintances whose lives include some pieces that are similar to mine and other pieces that my life doesn’t have. Some have fought illness. Others have left established career paths to launch their own businesses. Still others struggle with parenting issues or family problems or making ends meet. All have developed their own unique way of incorporating life experience, whatever it is, and moving forward.

And I have a tendency to ponder – in a layman sort of way and probably more often than I should – why peoples’ lives turn out the way they do, and to marvel at the variety of strategies that people find for working around obstacles, navigating turbulence, and creating meaning. All of which have led me to start this blog.

Finally, a bit about how this will work.

I have found that it doesn’t take a hero or a saint to teach me something I can use in my life, something to help orient me, or make me more grounded, or remind me of my priorities. Sometimes, all it takes is a glimpse into someone else’s life.

So, in addition to sharing some of my own thoughts and experiences, I propose to use this blog to present the stories of ordinary women, as they choose to tell them. Through conversations, interviews, or whatever means works, I will try to collect different women’s perspectives on their own lives, or parts of their lives, and share them here (always with their permission, of course).

Initially, many of the stories presented will be family, friends or acquaintances of mine, women who are already known to me to a greater or lesser degree. Over time, however, I hope to enlarge the circle of women whose stories are shared to include women I don’t yet know, but whom I may come to know through writing this blog, or simply by living life .

Every one of us has a story.  I invite you to tune in to hear a few of them.