Location: Asheville, North Carolina Being on the road as much as I am means eating a lot of meals alone. I really don’t mind that fact because it turns out I rarely eat a meal in solitary silence, even if I entered the restaurant asking for a table for one. I am sure this will not come …
Age: 47 (today!) Location: New York City, NY Growing up. Rory Byrne was a theatre kid. She was active in her Boca Raton, Florida high school productions and also did community theatre. She knew that was what she wanted to do with her life. Rory left Florida for California, attending the University of Southern California and graduating in 1995 with a …
Age: 61 Location: Matthews, NC Growing up in the suburbs of New York City, Bette Andrews had easy access to culture. Her mother always took her to the ballet and her family took full advantage of the plethora of museums that were just a short trip away. “Museums have always been the fiber of my life,” she says. Bette particularly …
Location: Portland, Oregon When I was asked to give some talks in Portland, Oregon, I immediately told my mom to come spend the week with me. I flew in from a training in Salt Lake City and my mom took the bus from Bend, a 4-hour drive over the mountains that required putting on snow chains …
Age: 47 Location: Conway, Arkansas Brian Stewart jokes that he and his wife, Tiffny, have an arranged marriage. They both grew up in rural Arkansas and met in the fourth grade. When they were in fifth grade, Tiffny’s mother pointed Brian out to Tiffny and told her, “That boy is nice. You should like him.” Tiffny obliged. Brian and Tiffny began …
Age: 35 Location: Provo, Utah So I get to my gate in Phoenix yesterday to catch my flight to Salt Lake City, where I am headed to give a presentation, and my name is called. It was actually a unique butchering of my name because apparently it was all in the computer as one name, including my middle …
Age: 51 Location: Charlotte, NC Sandra Goldman does not want to be called a survivor. She prefers the term conqueror. Facing cancer for the third time, and enduring more diagnostics, consultations, needle pricks, infusions, radiation and surgeries than imaginable, Sandra gets to be in charge of the terminology. And she is, indeed, a conquerer. As was true for me too, …
Age: 29 Location: Denver, Colorado There are certain days when I can absorb travel snafus and others when I need everything to run smoothly. (I mean, obviously no snafus is the goal for every travel experience, but when one accepts that they are an inevitable part of flying these days, you can start bargaining about when they …
Location: Charlotte, NC There are a few I told you so moments every parent gets to irrefutably claim, and one of mine is insisting that Eliza bring her guitar with her to treatment. She had to quickly unpack from her interrupted semester in Ireland and repack for the treatment center in California and she was jet-lagged …
Age: 46 Location: Asheville, NC Angela Alexander’s iconic dog portraits adorn many walls in Asheville, North Carolina. It is impossible to walk around downtown Asheville without spotting them in store windows or, as was the case with us when we spent a weekend there this fall, in the lobby of your hotel. They are so prolific that it is …