I’m a writer living in the western suburbs of Chicago with my philosopher husband, delightfully self- confident daughter, and mud-loving hound dog.

I write about the tensions that arise from extricating myself from diet culture and clawing my way towards body positivity. The specter at my heels is the ever-present anxiety of succumbing to the same diet-linked diseases that killed my parents before either saw their 60th birthday. I want to eat the cupcakes and love my body at any size, but I don’t want to die young. You see the conundrum.

My parents instilled in me a deep love for nature and people and a sense of responsibility to care for this beautiful, grief-soaked world. I do my best to tread lightly but I am a wanna-be minimalist with way too much stuff. I try to love well but get it wrong a lot of the time.

I love bold floral prints, decaf coffee, chatting with older ladies, Swatch watches, and enormous sunglasses.

You can sometimes see in my writing where I’ve sewn patches on my rather tattered life of faith. I converted to Eastern Orthodoxy in 2015 after a lifetime in Protestant churches. To be honest, I’m white-knuckling my grip on organized religion these days. I’m still seeking the expansive, inclusive, shockingly abundant path of love I see in Jesus’s life and teaching. I’m committed to work for the real flourishing of every last one of my neighbors, starting with the neighbors who are nothing like me.

When writing about my life, I may change names to protect anonymity. Like stories told on The Moth Radio Hour, these stories are true, as remembered by the storyteller. I try to carefully tease apart my daughter’s story from my own. The details of her life are her story to tell.