Welcome to Wordology.blog. The About page is to be an interesting back story that makes the reader feel comfortable with the writer. Good luck with that. I only recently became comfortable with me.
Let’s see, the important things are that my family and I are Believers. Currently I am the mom of a delightful teen, a married daughter and a married son.
Originally an Ohio native, we moved to sunny Arizona when I was in the 3rd grade. And I promptly came down with my first case of Guillain-Barre Syndrome. Look that up for laughs sometime. It was a chilling mystery disease back then, and I missed most of 4th grade because of it. (GBS and I danced again many years later when the medical community finally figured out what it was. Dastardly stuff.)
Moved back to Ohio.
Graduated college and began legal career.
Then back to sunny Arizona…
Clearly, we lived a highly-fluid lifestyle.
While there I worked for attorneys on high level land fraud cases in Phoenix.
Fun fact: There was no shortage of high-level land fraud cases in Arizona in that decade.
Corruption and financial disasters were rampant. Those cases involved some very dangerous people too. My husband fully expected to be raising our kids alone because…
Our law firm was in the thick of it. As a result, one night after working late, I was in a darkened lower level garage, lit by a few light bulbs, just moments away from the murder of someone scheduled to testify in court about the land fraud the next day, which taught me to go home before dark like most reasonable people.
Finally moving out of the desert heat up north to Prescott, AZ, opened up employment opportunities which became a tapestry of adventures.
- Division Chief of the county prosecutor’s Victim/Witness office, supervising staff and training members of the criminal justice system on victims’ rights.
- Hours in court trials with crime victims – children of abuse, domestic violence victims, rape victims, family members of homicide victims.
- With our team, responding to scenes of crime with law enforcement 24/7 to support the victimized. Major kudos to first responders. You are a special breed.
- Deputy Director of the state’s Attorney General’s Office of Victims of Crime. Testifying before the legislature on the plight of rural crime victims. And other fun stuff.
- 8 Years as a Therapeutic Foster Parent to teen girls. Drama-packed 8 years. Amazing kids!
- Somewhere in there were 4 trips to Africa as a short term missionary. Wrote a book about it. It was life-changing. Check this out
- Also taught at the college level: English, Business Law, and other courses for business students.
About Time to move again (sigh).
My family, including my adopted teen daughter, moved to Colorado where–after 1 major and 5 mini moves– we now live with most of the other littles and bigs in the family. We share space with my daughter’s large family consisting (most importantly) of my 6 grand kids — all 10 of us together!
Oh, I guess 11 of us. My big orange cat has been such a trooper through all these moves. At 19 human years, she is way older than I am in cat years. That makes her the oldest living creature in the house. Followed quickly by me. As she got older, she slowed down and has gotten very thin. I merely slowed down. She is my greatest fan. And I am hers.
When you get older, you have a lot of back story. Ending soon.
- Currently coaching a very select number of people who want to write books — life stories, amazing recoveries, etc. (This could be you. Email [email protected] for details. We meet once a week for 6 months to produce your project – series of stories or book – your choice.)
- My daughter Holly and I own a company providing unique gifts for pregnant moms and young parents. https://www.hellosproutbaby.com . If you know of anyone who is pregnant or has young kids, that site is for them. And you if you are a mom of any age.
While it appears I jumped around a lot, looking back, I see I changed careers, not just jobs, about every 8 years. It’s been a wild ride. I am grateful for every fun, heartbreaking, scary, hilarious, painful, uncertain moment of it. Don’t kid me – you would say the same thing about your own life, right?
So that’s me. This is us. And I have to go feed the cat, so this ends now.
Are you comfortable with me yet? Do you trust me? Great! Let’s get to the posts.
Claudia