I have always been interested in people and their stories.

My interest in women’s issues led me to a job as a battered women and children’s advocate at CVAN Women’s Program in Concord, NC where I worked for almost eight years. My responsibilities there included providing advocacy services to women in the shelter, covering a 24-hour crisis line, and assisting women in court. These tasks required me to really listen to women’s stories – a real privilege – and to affirm their experience as the experts of their own situations.

After retiring from the non-profit sector to become a stay-at-home mom, I eventually returned to school and graduated in 2009 from Queens University of Charlotte with a master’s degree in Organizational Communication or, apparently, a master’s in Writing About Myself. I loved graduate school and how it changed the way I looked at every day life. While many of my peers were writing about their jobs at Bank of America or Duke Energy or Carolinas Healthcare System, I wrote papers about Robert Earl Keen as the persuasive wise fool and Sarah Silverman’s use of the superiority theory of humor; I deconstructed my favorite Mommy Blogger and tried to answer crucial life questions like Will my marriage survive my husband’s love affair with his Blackberry? A more sophisticated grad school recap: My research interests included the social construction of personal identity, especially concerning women in the internet age. My thesis, “Word Unplugged: Transcending the New Social Communication Contract” explored the pitfalls of our “always on” culture, and advocated for meaningful, lasting connections through purposeful, powerful language. (Smarty pants!)