About Me

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I was born in the Central Valley of California and lived there most of my life. My hometown, Lodi, was made famous by Creedence Clearwater Revival’s late-60s, folksy rock tune “Stuck in Lodi.” Despite what the song says, the small agricultural town along the San Joaquin River Delta was a great place to grow up.

I’m the middle of three children. My older brother, Brian, has resided in Heaven since 2007 and I miss him every day. My younger sister, Deanne, lives in Lodi with Justin, her husband of 30 years. My sister is my person. She’s one of my favorite people on the planet and was the first person I told about writing Becoming Unbroken. I never remember meeting Justin; I’ve known him my whole life. He is far more like a brother than a brother-in-law, and I love him dearly. 

My parents got engaged 15 days after they met and have been married for more than 50 years. My dad was a United States Marine headed to Vietnam, and my mom was a hippie who’d just moved to the valley with her family. She wrote and received lots of letters and got to know her mailman as she waited by the mailbox each day. Turns out, the mailman had a son (six of them, actually, plus a daughter). He arranged an introduction while the oldest son was home on leave from boot camp (which is a funny story for another day), and, certainly much sooner than even he could have expected, became her father-in-law.

I met and married my husband Corey in 2004. He grew up in the Pacific Northwest and was the youngest of three brothers. After living in California for nearly 10 years, he wanted to move back up north, so we moved to Snohomish County, in the north Puget Sound area of Western Washington in 2013. We have two children, Jayden and Abbie, who are, hands down, the best things I have ever had a part in creating. 

When we moved to Washington, I told Corey that I wanted to go back to school to finish my degree. He gave me his blessing, but made me promise that someday I’d write a book. I laughed him off and promised I would – although I can neither confirm nor deny that my fingers were crossed behind my back. 

Corey was diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma, a blood cancer, just a year or two after that promise was made. After a short and very difficult battle, he joined my brother in Heaven in 2018. 

I went back to school in 2019 and slowly worked toward my longtime goal of finishing my degree. As a newly single mom, it took longer than I anticipated, but in 2023, I graduated summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Science in Strategic Communication from Liberty University. My parents, my sister and brother-in-law, and my kids flew to Virginia with me to participate in the festivities as I finally walked the stage for my college graduation. It was one of the proudest moments of my life. 

After finishing school, I took some time to consider what was next. An opportunity I’d hoped would turn into something didn’t, and I was at a bit of a loss. I was standing in my kitchen one day when I remembered the conversation with Corey and the promise I’d made him. I actually laughed out loud because the memory came out of left field and caught me completely off guard. In searching for job opportunities online, novelist wasn’t in any of my filters. 

When Corey was first diagnosed with cancer, I considered how best to keep our families informed of his treatment and how he was doing. Multiple Myeloma is cancer of the blood inside the bone marrow. Unlike a localized cancer, where you can remove a tumor or radiate a specific area, MM is present throughout the whole body from the start. Its treatment, which in Corey’s case included a bone marrow transplant, can be complicated. Corey was from a very close-knit family and I knew they’d want to know every detail of the journey we suddenly and unexpectedly found ourselves on. 

As a solution to the communication dilemma, I started a blog. I figured it would be an efficient way to keep an accounting of the details of his treatment, how he was responding, and what was next in his treatment plan. What began as a tool to explain and communicate complicated medical information soon became a channel for me to communicate much more than just the medical intricacies of the roller coaster we were on. I found that writing about all aspects of our journey – physical, emotional, relational, spiritual – was very cathartic. It was an outlet I needed far more than I knew.

For the next six years,  I chronicled Corey’s battle with cancer, our unexpected and tragic loss, and life “after” on a blog site called Unshaken. It was during that time that I discovered a love of writing. 

In what is perhaps a story for a different day, the idea for Becoming Unbroken came to me in what I can only describe as a divine download one Sunday night in October of 2023. I scratched the idea out in a memo late that night – when my mind was racing and I couldn’t sleep – and sent it to my sister. The gist of her response was, go for it. I sat down at my laptop the next day and started writing, not knowing where it would go or really even how to start. Nevertheless, I wrote 10,000 words over the next four days, and we were off to the races. 

While Becoming Unbroken is not autobiographical, there are certainly elements of the story that ring true to what I experienced losing my brother and then my husband. I hope this story touches your heart and reaches parts of you that may be hidden from the view of others – and sometimes even of yourself.