HOW I GOT HERE

I'm a fourth-generation Fargo, North Dakota native whose left and right brain have battled each other for control as long as I can remember. After beginning a university career as a theatre and dance major, I caved to family pressure and the whispers from my left brain, earning a BS in Elementary Ed and English and a minor in French at University of North Dakota--my right brain suggesting that this path led to a garret or an attic or a loft or at least a basement apartment in a big city where I could indulge in the angst necessary to become a writer. I did not voice this dream, however, and wrote nothing in college other than the required papers, a single short story, and joyless, formless poems.

Married in college and a mother 18 months later, I ran a small construction company with my husband for a few years until we moved to Denver. Three years of low pay as a teacher in three Denver private schools and the financial realities of raising three children with divorce looming spurred me to join the Pitney Bowes sales team. My success there prompted my dad to suggest I return to Fargo and join the family insurance business. I dragged the kids home and learned about crop insurance on the job. When my father retired I was at the helm, following in his footsteps serving on national boards, even lobbying Congress on behalf of the industry.

The sale of that business allowed me to give my left brain a rest while I earned an MFA in Creative Writing at Minnesota State University Moorhead. One unpublished novel, multiple poems, a screenplay, and four short films marked my tenure there.

While marketing the novel, I stumbled on an adoption website. With no thought of the consequences, I clicked on Waiting Children. My two bio sons, two stepsons, and the Korean daughter I adopted as a ten-year-old were now grown, and my husband of eight years, Norm Robinson, was enjoying the quiet. Somehow, I convinced him to travel with me to Siberia to adopt a Russian teen. A year later we returned to Russia and adopted this daughter's best friend.

My memoir, Someone Else's Children, which wraps this story up, is available for representation.

Meanwhile I am back in the film world, working with Joseph Akol Makeer, a Lost Boy of Sudan who wants to help orphans in the village where he was born in South Sudan. As producer and director of African Soul, American Heart, I traveled with Joseph and a film crew to Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya, and Duk Payuel, South Sudan in December 2007 to make the documentary African Soul, American Heart. Thank God Norm bought me a nice camera the previous Christmas. The gallery images on the site are from this trip.

As president of the African Soul, American Heart foundation, we are now working to raise funds to feed and shelter orphans in Duk Payuel. Knowing how one less-traveled path leads to another, I continue to trek.