MY STORY

Starting over is something I’ve done before.

Apparently, Starting Over Is One of My Specialties.

I’ve reinvented myself more than once, and most of those reinventions were never part of the plan.

I dropped out of high school. I battled addiction. I moved around a lot! I made plenty of mistakes. I also learned that a difficult beginning doesn’t get to decide how the rest of your story ends.

So I kept going.

The First Version of Me

I didn’t exactly follow the traditional roadmap.

I dropped out of high school and spent years making choices that didn’t do me any favors. Addiction became part of my story, and getting out of that chapter took work, honesty, and a willingness to admit that what I was doing wasn’t working.

Recovery changed the direction of my life.

It didn’t magically erase the past. It gave me the opportunity to build something different.

And eventually, I decided I wasn’t finished becoming whoever the hell I was supposed to be.

But That Person Was Supposed to Be Educated
I had dropped out of high school, so naturally, in my 40s, I decided to go back to school.

I started with a bachelor’s degree in Information Technology, studying online while continuing to live my very grown-up, already-established life. Then I decided a bachelor’s degree wasn’t quite enough, so I went on to Capella and earned my MBA.

There was something pretty satisfying about that.

The girl who had dropped out of high school eventually became the woman with an IT bachelor’s degree and then an MBA. Somewhere along the way, I stopped seeing my high school dropout status as something that defined me.

It became something I had done.

Not something I was.

So what does a former high-school dropout do with an IT degree?

Apparently, become a Teacher

I started teaching computer classes to middle-school and high-school students. We began with the basics—learning how computers worked and how to actually use them—and as the students progressed, so did the classes. Before long, I was teaching more advanced design programs and helping kids discover that computers weren’t just machines for typing papers and playing games. They could be tools for creating things.

And then, because apparently teaching computers wasn’t enough, I ended up teaching other things too. Leadership. Photography. Philanthropy. Even some business classes. For five years, I got to watch kids come into my classroom not knowing what they were capable of and leave having discovered that they could actually create something pretty damn cool.

That part mattered to me because in a lot of ways, I was still figuring out what I was capable of, too.

And while I was teaching, I wasn’t exactly sitting still. I was working on my MBA through Capella University. So there I was—a former high-school dropout, teaching the next generation while going back to school myself.

Life has a funny sense of humor sometimes.

The girl who had once walked away from school had somehow become the woman standing in front of a classroom, teaching other kids how to learn.

And I wasn’t finished yet.

A New Country, A New Chapter

When I stopped teaching, Dave and I decided it was time to try something we’d talked about on and off for years: moving back to Canada.

I was born in Canada, and I had always wanted to give it another try. By then, my mom was living with us, too, and we thought the healthcare system would be better for her.

It wasn’t.

But that’s another story. 😉

We ended up staying in Canada for twelve years.

I picked up a couple of odd jobs along the way, but finding work in my field proved frustrating. Canada didn’t recognize my U.S. education, which meant the degrees I’d worked so hard to earn suddenly didn’t carry the weight I’d expected them to.

So, eventually, I stopped trying to fit myself into someone else’s requirements and created my own opportunity.

I opened my own graphic design firm.

And it worked.

I built a successful business and ran it for years, until eventually it was time for another change—and we returned to the United States.

Coming Home Was Supposed to Be the Easy Part

After twelve years in Canada, Dave and I decided it was time to come home.

By then, I had built a career, run my own business, and lived a life that looked very different from the one I had started with. In 2025, at 62, I officially retired.

I thought retirement was going to mean slowing down, but apparently, the universe had other plans.

We returned to Oregon in January 2026, expecting to settle back into the home we had left behind, but what we found was something else entirely.

Unfortunately, the property management company hadn’t exactly been taking good care of the place. Twelve years of poor management had taken a toll. The house needed work. The yard needed even more. Trees had been neglected, systems needed attention, and repairs that should have been handled years earlier were now ours to deal with.

So much for retirement.

Instead of spending my days quietly enjoying the life I’d worked decades to build, I found myself once again learning, researching, fixing, planning, hiring contractors, digging in the dirt—and occasionally wondering exactly what the hell we’d gotten ourselves into.

But here’s the thing.

I’ve started over before.

More than once.

And this time, I’m doing it on my own terms.

One room. One garden bed. One repair. One creative project—and one adventure—at a time.