Old Friends Forever Family
Girlfriends get us through tough times, celebrate our victories and always got our back. In our senior year at Illinois State University, I shared a townhouse off campus with five friends. We called ourselves family. Ever loyal fans, they supported me my final season of college basketball that began badly with a back injury. Frustrated […]
My Bucket List for Midwest
I left the Midwest 43 yrs ago, but I didn’t move to the glamorous coasts – Boston, NYC, LA – nooo I flew across the Big Pond, landed in Paris and picked up a Frenchman. Reading The Midwest Survival Guide: How We Talk, Love, Work, Drink and Eat…Everything With Ranch by Charlie Berens, a comedian […]
Having Fun Hanging Out with Swiss cows
How do I survive autumn stuck in an unheated, mountain chalet the size of a doll house? I scoot out the door and head for the meadows to hang with the cows. Cows are sacred in Switzerland. They are so revered that every year they get invited to summer camp in the Swiss Jura […]
What Can Go Wrong? Dream House Never Gets Built
So many people, who know of our dream to build a house in the Jura Mountains of Switzerland, keep asking, “How is the new house coming along?” It’s not. What could go wrong? A home that builders promised to finish last April that I called, “our plot” remains like it sounds – a hole in […]
I am
X-Pat, a feisty globetrotter. Teacher, writer, coach, speaker, and trailblazer with the down-to-earth, open-armed persona of The Heartland and a European twist. I have lived in four different countries, speak three languages and raised two bi-cultural kids with one très bon Frenchman. My passion is inspiring courage, breaking barriers, and creating connections.
Down and out? Hopeless and helpless? No matter where you are in your journey, my stories can help pick up your spirits, make transitions, gain new perspectives or just escape the daily grind.
If you deny a woman’s history, you erase her identity. I reveal the athlete’s untold story, from the passage of Title IX through forty years of social change. What makes it different from other sport biographies is the voice of a woman who walks the talk, who dribbled the ball and tells the story. Learn more by clicking here