solver by nature. She has a Bachelor of Social Work degree from Western Michigan University and an advanced degree from the school of hard knocks—Post Traumatic Stress Disorder – formed by her job at Social Security where she spent twenty years, her first working life, adjudicating disability claims. Also a union activist while there, she negotiated state employees’ first labor contracts under civil service rules. In 2000, she erupted into poetry while helping a published poet obtain her disability benefits, and one writing road led to another. In this second life, she woke up a writer and is in the midst of writing novels while poems just pile up. Words have become her passion. She finds solace there. And now, she is giving voice to the voiceless, telling trauma stories for those who can’t yet speak. She lives in Okemos, Michigan with her husband Jay who inspires the romance writer in her. Her hockey-playing son Guy, still active in his sport as a referee and player for the Kenosha Knights after playing college hockey at Buffalo State, she embarrasses by being a poet.