I hope you don’t mind first-person narratives because I can’t refer to myself as if I’m sitting on a podium waiting for the emcee to introduce me in glowing detail as I squirm in embarrassment.

I am the retired owner, writer, and editor of a thirty-year-plus small-town paper and ink newspaper. My life has change drastically in the last few years, and it remains to be seen how this phoenix is going to arise from the ashes.

Based in mid-central Alberta, Canada during the (almost) three seasons of the year that the weather gods smile, I have been privileged to escape to the warmth of the southwestern United States where my husband David and I explored with a succession of Kawasaki Nomads for 20 years. We gorged on local foods, art, history, and scenery and considered ourselves fortunate to have been touched by so many people’s lives and stories.

No longer half of a whole, I am trying to find my footing, my place in this next phase of life, and to fulfill what he kept telling me in the last few months, “Keep doing what you do, you’re good at it.”

Hopefully, through my stories, as irreverent as some may be at times, I will find what he meant by that. If you choose to take the journey with me you are welcome. If you choose to share some of your stories with me to entwine in my storytelling, I would be honoured.