On the Cover Brazil changed me, in a positive way. I had been a shy child. In Brazil, I became the center of attention. I was a tall, blond American girl in a Latin country. I learned how to stand out in a crowd; I had to. I was at least a foot taller than anyone around me. I couldn’t hide in my books anymore. Inside, I was still the shy, nerdy kid, but on the outside, I learned to “I also learned that I can make be engaged and engaging.
my dreams reality. Since I had wanted to travel for as long I could remember, and there sat, in a foreign country, I knew I had made my dreams of travel a reality.”
When I got pregnant with my daughter, I put my dream of travel away. I had responsibilities. But, rather than forget about my dream or bury it, I left it out where I could look at it. It sat on a shelf staring at me. When I married my husband, Randal, I made sure that he knew that travel was an important component of well-being for me. Fortunately, or maybe fortuitously, I had met a man that also had dreams of travel. Unfortunately, it was years before we would/could pursue those dreams . Randal and I spent several years working menial jobs in order to make ends meet. I worked in a couple of coffee houses, a bakery and even as a janitor. I ran my own daycare for several years. I had good bosses and not so good bosses. I had bosses that yelled at me for every little thing and bosses that gave me complete free1000 gates, Kyoto, Japan in 2015
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Open-Mindedness Issue 2017 INSPIRATIONAL WOMAN MAGAZINE