Featured in the Lakeshore Weekly News

Ten years ago, I approached a local editor with the idea of me writing a column called “Outside the Box.” I wanted to write about fun and different things I experienced around the Lake Minnetonka area, as well as my thoughts on different topics I hoped might resonate with others in the community.

​Writing was not my background, but it was and is my passion. I didn’t study it in school, nor did I have a degree of any kind. What I had was a desire to share. I also had crappy health insurance, making therapy hard to come by, not to mention I was in Scientology, where counseling outside of the church was not an option. My column became my therapy.

Featured in the Lakeshore Weekly News

Ten years ago, I approached a local editor with the idea of me writing a column called “Outside the Box.” I wanted to write about fun and different things I experienced around the Lake Minnetonka area, as well as my thoughts on different topics I hoped might resonate with others in the community.

Writing was not my background, but it was and is my passion. I didn’t study it in school, nor did I have a degree of any kind. What I had was a desire to share. I also had crappy health insurance, making therapy hard to come by, not to mention I was in Scientology, where counseling outside of the church was not an option. My column became my therapy.

Featured in the Lakeshore Weekly News

I’m celebrating 365 days of being sober. That’s 525,600 minutes without alcohol. I stopped drinking because it was making my auto-immune issues worse and because I felt I indulged in consuming wine and vodka a tad too much. At the time my over-indulging was a secondary reason for quitting.
When I first stopped drinking I wondered if I was an alcoholic. I come from a long line of them on both sides of my family, so it was very possible. There were several times I would lay awake at night and google “How do you know if you are an alcoholic?”

Featured in the Lakeshore Weekly News

I’m convinced more than ever that how we choose to view a situation affects the outcome. There is the cliche question of do you see the glass half empty or do you see the glass half full?
When you see the glass as half full, you are grateful for what is there. When you see the glass half empty, you are resentful over what is not there. Gratitude has a way of turning what we have into enough. Interestingly, showing gratitude toward a person or behavior encourages more of that behavior.

Featured in the Lakeshore Weekly News

Despite the fact that I’ve worked in radio, have been on TV, currently host a podcast about the joys and pitfalls of being a grown woman and have written about my life and community for 10 years, I’ve always felt I was an introvert.
People have a hard time believing this about me because I’m such an open book. Being an introvert doesn’t necessarily mean you are a wallflower. Being an extrovert doesn’t necessarily mean you are the life of the party.

Being that I’ve been sober for eight months, a winery might be the last place you might think you would see me. The thing is, I love wine. I love the social aspects of it and all that goes into creating it.
When I drank it, I drank too much of it. I have both Grave’s disease and Hashimoto’s, two autoimmune diseases, which are made worse when consuming alcohol or foods that cause inflammation. This is why I had to break up with wine and I eat a diet that is Paleo, which is also anti-inflamatory.

My daughter Kelsey was about to run out of the house we were renting on the Big Island of Hawaii to get her brother, who was down the street at the beach with a few other family members.
I told her to stay, that she has a baby now. She didn’t listen. Her thought was that if we were going to die, we were going to die together and she needed to bring her brother home.