About Me

I’m a mother, raised by a mother, who was raised by a mother, who was also raised by…you guessed it…a mother. My own motherhood came five years ago when I gave birth to my daughter, Addy, with ginger hair and a stubborn streak rivaled only by her dad. 

For a midwestern gal, I came to motherhood a little late in the game. I only imagined raising a child after my first marriage failed, and I met Aaron, my partner of 8 years. In 2013, while living in what I called America’s Wild Wild West (Williston, ND), I found out I was pregnant. It was my husband who got excited first. Away from my family and friends, in a new place and surrounded by a lot of men, I took his lead for the next 9 months. The moment Addy was born, it didn’t matter where I was. I was home.

I have spent a lot of time around kids and their parents. I have had over 20 years’ experience in a professional capacity as a youth director for a number of Lutheran churches and camps. I still manage to keep a toe in the field working part time as a consultant and curriculum writer.

I am most comfortable as an urbanite but have started stretching my imagination by looking at rural real estate (so as to support my husband’s dream of acreage and living off the land). As long as there are cool people to hang out with, a functioning downtown store front, a church with a youth director on staff and some progressive voters, I think I can live anywhere. As I tell my daughter, home is wherever your people are!

Here some other things you might want to know about me...

Mom is the best job I’ve ever had! I am privileged to be part of a special and sacred tribe. It’s a tribe that’s been around since the beginning of time and has been given the most important task a person could have: bearing life. I have bore a beautiful life and take nurturing her very seriously. I don’t parent alone but with a partner I adore and am better with him than without. Aaron and I have been married for 3 years and committed to each other for 8.

Before becoming a mom, I was a woman first! I consider myself a feminist because the equality of all sexes in the public sphere would not only be the right thing but the best thing for our country and world. When so many from my tribe have ditched the term, I am holding fast. Some say it is simply too politically “charged”. Sometimes intense is all I’ve got and is exactly what our society needs.

Christian is another label I use for myself. I have some theological education and am working my way toward becoming a pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA). But I don’t know it all nor claim to have it all figured it out. As a Christian, I choose LOVE, especially when it isn’t easy or popular. I try to love in the way that Jesus did. Nadia Bolz-Weber, a Lutheran pastor, sums it up this way, “we should not be more loyal to an idea, a doctrine, or an interpretation of a Bible verse than we are to people.” Jesus was loyal to people who were underprivileged, ignored and dismissed by religious leaders and the doctrines they sought to uphold. Jesus chose LOVE.

Mommy role models became more important than parenting books when I imagined how I wanted to parent. There are so many theories and so much advice when it comes to the topic of parenting. I read a few books and sifted through different blogs but in the end I put them away and started talking with other mothers. They offered a sense of support a book just couldn’t. I quickly discovered the best theories are just that, theories. I’ve always leaned more toward praxis than thesis.

This is why I started Her First Role Model, to share the voices of other moms and their daughters, to look at a variety of topics through a varied and authentic lens, to put women’s voices front and center. I have met some amazing women – some moms and some not; they are my tribe – and this is where I celebrate them and the ways they have made me a better person, both for myself and for my daughter.