It was about 5:30 AM and everyone else in the house was still asleep. Being an early riser, I already had my coffee in hand and was well into a morning routine of journaling. A practice I’ve held fast to for over 25 years (or more, but that is when it became a daily habit). It was Mother’s Day Weekend (2026) and I was spending it with my father’s side of the family.

Aside from enjoying Sunday Brunch with everyone, I was hoping for a little time to talk with my father about his Grandparents, too. My father’s side is Canadian and I grew up listening to stories of Captain Angus Walters (a first cousin on my Great Grandmother’s side) and the famous tall ship Bluenose. In addition to the well known Nova Scotian boat builder, Vernon Langille on my Great Grandfather’s side (who I’ve yet to source photos of).

Unfortunately, growing up we did not spend as much time with my father’s side of the family as we did my mother’s, leaving me with more questions about my paternal lineage later in life. My father’s side of the family has always felt more myth than fact, seeding my imagination with every passing year. A curiosity that would ignite my passion for the sea and sailing. I suppose not knowing has also gifted me an adventurous life!

Some time ago I learned that through my Great Grandparents, we qualified for Canadian Citizenship, which was fascinating and exciting. At that time I was traveling abroad chasing my sailing dreams. I envied my fellow sailors with dual citizenships and the privilege to experience extended stays in faraway places. This was LONG before recent geopolitical shifts, back when my excitement was driven purely by a romantic craving for open-ended travel.

When I first began to inquire about how to apply, Canada changed the law and it voided my qualifications by one generation. My father and aunt qualified but not their children. Disappointed, I tabled it until January of 2026, when a news article crossed my screen stating that Canada had changed the law back in December of 2025—Lost Canadians (Bill C-3).

For real?!?!

Hours of verification later, it was true. Myself, along with other members of my family along my paternal line, all qualify to apply for Canadian citizenship if we can prove our line of descent. Little did I know the rabbit hole I was about to slip into would reveal a wealth of untold stories and tales far more valuable than securing a few birth certificates for a bureaucratic application.

I didn’t just track down how to obtain the certified documents necessary for citizenship; I uncovered a colorful family tree and, to this day, I am still exploring its many branches. However, for the moment a couple of key findings resonate the most—the naming and preserving of natural landmarks.

In my book, When The Road Disappears, I had a theory: if the road was named, someone cared enough about it to maintain it. It was a good sign that my passage would be possible and most likely safe. I’m here to say it never failed me, either. When something is given a name, whether man-made or natural, there is often a personal connection to what was named.

My first discovery of this within my personal ancestry was Langille Lake in Nova Scotia, not far from where my Great Grandfather grew up. Now is a good time to mention that when you are in Nova Scotia, the Langille name is quite common and has deep roots within its history.

This had me wondering: what else is named Langille? While it is a common name in Nova Scotia, it is otherwise very uncommon outside of Canada. To discover places damed after a Langille within the USA would be otherwise unexpected and worth investigating further.

All this brings us back to Mother’s Day Weekend. While everyone else was still asleep and my cup of coffee nearly empty, I asked Google about landmarks and places named Langille. What it came back with has forever rewired my brain and changed my view of the road ahead.

We’ll begin first with the discovery of Langille Peak in Washington State (pictured above), because I drove right on by it during my 2018 expedition. You’ll want to drop a waypoint on that one—we’ll circle back to it.

I would then uncover that there is a Langille Mountain in Alaska and another Langille Peak in California (pictured above). Another region I traveled through in 2018, albeit north of its location. Topping it all off, a Langille Glacier on Mount Hood...

Mount Hood?!?

Digging deeper, I would uncover that some of my ancestors settled in Oregon’s Hood River Valley and would help map and define a significant part of Mount Hood’s history. On that discovery, I nearly spilled the last of my coffee. Mount Hood holds a special place for me, and I’ve never understood why. Since my first visit in June of 2017, it was a feeling in my bones, and on my return in 2018, it was a vibration within my soul.

Sadly, on that morning at my father’s, I had to hit pause because I only had a few hours before it was time to pack up and make my way home. The rest of my research and the subsequent verification would have to resume later in the day. Needless to say, my father was barely into his coffee when I came out of the guest room fully caffeinated, hyped, and eager to share my morning discoveries.

There were now places to explore, timelines to understand, and a lot of verification needed to ensure we were, in fact, related. There are two distinct lines of Langilles that settled in Nova Scotia from Europe in the 1752: David and Leopold. While related, they were born to different parents. I am a direct descendant of Leopold, and I wanted to determine if the Langilles of Mount Hood were as well.

Now is a good time to share that I’m not wildly into genealogy as much as I am into the human stories that shaped a family line. I’m far more interested in how the Langilles became who they are than I am in knowing every single one of them—and there are plenty. My Great (x5) Grandfather had three wives and they all had a lot of kids, and those kids had a lot of kids, too.

For me to get really stoked on this, I needed to know if this Oregon branch was from the same pairing—meaning Leopold and his first wife Marguerite Sandoz. From as far as I can confirm via Canada’s online archives, we are in fact first cousins, removed by four generations. This became the moment where every single cell in my body began to vibrate. This was wild, fascinating and exciting!

My brain raced back to my 2018 expedition, trying to reconnect with a few key moments from when I traveled from Washington State down into Oregon. A part of the journey that did not make it into the book but stuck with me because of unexplainable sensations I felt. Which I now know might have been because I was, unknowingly, following in the exact footprints of my ancestors.

Langille Peak in Washington, that I drove by, was named after my Uncle James Leander Langille. James helped oversee the construction of the now historic Cloud Cap Inn resting on the northeastern side of Mount Hood. His wife, my Aunt Sarah would make a name for herself as host looking after guests and visitors of the Inn. Two of their three sons, William and Doug, would become highly acclaimed guides and foresters. The mountain in Alaska was named after William and the peak in California after Doug. Both in recognition of their contributions to the conservation of those regions.

In my book, When The Road Disappears, I wrote about a distinct moment on my adventure when I knew it was time to ‘go home.’ At that time I was camped on the coast of Washington. For me, it meant returning to the northeast. Yet, I vividly recall wanting to revisit Mount Hood and the Hood River Valley before heading that way.

The first time I ever visited Oregon was for a short photography assignment in Bend. On the way there I stopped to explore Timberline Lodge (south side of Mount Hood). On my return to catch a plane home to Vermont for my next gig, instead of taking the direct route to Portland, I felt an instinctual pull to alter my course. I bypassed the highway to loop all the way up and around Mount Hood’s east side, driving straight through the Hood River Valley. Where my ancestors had their homestead in the late 1800s.

This is a story I want to do justice to, and while I hate—but kind of love—a good cliffhanger, I need to leave you here for the moment. We’ll need to drop a waypoint while I continue to unearth historical stones, verify more details and map out additional waypoints for deeper research and understanding.

I intend to write about all of it, and bring my Substack readers on this journey with me. My hope, as I share these tales, it might inspire you to be a little more curious about your own historical rabbit holes.

Where to from here?

The deepest historical truths aren’t online. They are housed in physical archives, local museums, and university libraries across the Pacific Northwest, Alaska, and Canada.

During my first storytelling project, I made plenty of mistakes. The biggest? Trying to create in a vacuum. It was lonely, and the work suffered because of it. I don’t want to do this next chapter alone.

To transition this from a passionate hobby into my life’s work—including a potential new book—I need to build a self-sustaining ecosystem. My goal is to begin boots-on-the-ground research by July 2027.

If we hit our early funding milestones this autumn, I will fast-track a 2-week research expedition to Halifax, Nova Scotia, followed by a trip to the Forest History Society in North Carolina to unearth original photography and writings from my cousin, William A. Langille.

I need your help to get back out on the road. Here is how we uncover this story together:

• Free Subscription: Help me build a community of ~ 1,000 natural history enthusiasts and get regular project updates. I will be hosting a once monthly live via Zoom beginning in September to help with accountability and connect with others on similar quests of their own.

• Annual Membership: Direct-fund digital tools and archival retrieval fees.

• Founding Membership: Directly finance the physical travel, lodging, and fuel needed to reach the municipalities that house physical archives not available online.

If you enjoy a good historical adventure, curiosity for the forest service and passion for conservation and preservation — please consider becoming a paid subscriber. It will make all difference.

Subscribe now

Can’t contribute financially? You can still help me uncover missing waypoints and define important waterline. If you have personal experience, local knowledge, or research tips regarding these regions, please drop a comment below!

Writing and photography were never about me, and that is what I love about being a writer and a photographer. I am a deeply curious human who loves to learn from others, finding joy and delight as I listen to and watch strangers with gentle intention. They become single-serving friends as I collect their stories, one frame or sentence at a time.

In the beginning, my written stories were about the sailors I looked up to who braved oceans as they attempted to break records. Along the way, I discovered that my childhood passion for photography could be more than a hobby. With some encouragement from my sailing peers, I began pairing my pictures with my words.

Whether it was a tale of a sailor’s dream to race solo across an ocean or local legends who shaped a community — using words and pictures to shine a light on other people’s stories shaped my own life’s journey in the way water has shaped the canyons of the world. Deep ravines with rich layers of color, wild and unique bends—stories I carry with me to this day. None of which are my own, but all of which I hold with soft hands.

In 2017, I dared to embark on my first self-supported personal project where the vision was to unite people around personal stories of cancer’s impact. Yet along the way, as the roads literally and figuratively disappeared, forcing me to sit with my own story for long stretches of time, the connection to why I was out there became stretched and blurred.

While my project did allow me to collect humbling experiences, and my big adventure did result in writing my first book, When The Road Disappears, A New Journey Begins. Along the way something broke apart within me. For the last few years, I’ve been trying to sort out what exactly, so I could mend it. Fix it.

A couple of days ago, while mentoring a young storyteller, something they said shifted my perspective enough to finally spy the fractured part of my soul. We’d been discussing everything from story structure to festival applications. Moving between the worlds of creative craft to creative business, and the push pull between the two.

For too long now, I have felt trapped in the exhausting cycle of talking about myself—explaining what I am doing, defending why I am doing it, and putting my own narrative on display. It was never supposed to be about me. It was also suppose to be about the stories.

My photography, my writing, the films I support—have in the past and need to be from this day forth amplifiers of the people, the places, and the organizations that make my heart sing with humble delight.

For too long now, I have felt trapped in the exhausting cycle of talking about myself... It was never supposed to be about me.

One might suggest the fix is simple: stop talking about yourself! If only it were that easy. In today’s creator economy, we are taught to believe that if we don't share pieces of ourselves, no one will ever find the stories we care about. But I do not see myself as a content creator or an influencer. Instead, I am a keeper of human stories and personal experiences.

I don’t want to write about myself in the ways I’ve been taught. Honestly, just stringing those words together makes breathing feel easier. My heart feels lighter, and the creative block I’ve been carrying since May is finally melting away. I have come to realize that people can learn my story simply through the lens I focus my life on. I believe this to be true because it is how my earliest readers and followers first came to know me.

Now, I take a deep breath because I’ve been sitting on a story that, while rooted deeply in my family tree, is not about me. Yet, I believe it explains why I care so much about certain global matters—specifically, the health of our forests and the impact of wildfire on our planet. Witnessing the scars left by commercial logging and extreme burns during my overlanding travels across the country has, at times, moved me to tears.

My heart feels lighter, and the creative block I’ve been carrying since May is finally melting away.

Which leads me to my current research. It turns out that my paternal ancestors helped build and run Cloud Cap Inn, a historic lodge nestled on the northeastern slopes of Oregon's Mount Hood. The wild thing is, I found myself standing there in the summer of 2018 all because of a little "gut feeling." It was a story I left out of my book because, at the time, I thought the only reason I was in the Hood River Valley was because it felt safe and familiar. There was no story to chase—or so I thought.

But the plot is even more bewildering and exciting. One of my cousins, Will (pictured above), who helped map Mount Hood and its glaciers with his brother, Harold Douglas Langille, went on to become a key figure in providing the data that proved the need for a U.S. Forest Service in the early 1900s. His writing, photography, and illustrations were used to advocate for the conservation and preservation of forests that, to this day, remain at risk. Because of his work, and the work of those who came after him, their boundaries hold. For now.

With this being my last post centered on myself, my next will be the first of many exploring my family history and the legacies that followed. To be perfectly honest, I have no idea where this will take me. I just know I’m ready to begin the journey.

I’m ready to lose myself in the research—to learn from my late cousin, not just through his forestry work, but through how he documented his human experiences. I am also more than ready to get back out into the field.

There are a few key places I must visit to access special collection archives containing his hand-drawn illustrations and photographs. While most of Will’s work is accessible, it is not online, which means I will be traveling to Oregon in person. I am also hoping to trace our lineage back to our Great-Grandfather, seven generations removed from me. There are some curious themes emerging there that I feel a deep pull to explore further.

Returning to the practice of holding other people’s stories with soft hands makes my heart vibrate with joy, especially because this chapter feels so deeply personal. Reconnecting with why I first fell into the magical world of writing, photography, and film is freeing. Finding a path forward that simultaneously explains why I care so deeply about conservation, preservation, and our natural world is grounding.

Thank you for traveling this road with me through the disappearing parts. A new chapter begins now, and I can’t wait to bring you along on this curious journey.

Returning to the practice of holding other people’s stories with soft hands makes my heart vibrate with joy, especially because this chapter feels so deeply personal.

Author Updates [July 26, 2026]:

📖 For my readers who’ve supported my first book, When The Road Disappears, I have a couple of updates for you.

• There is now a complete visual online gallery of the photography collected from the time I began the adventure to its conclusion. Please visit here for more information and instructions to access and view the expansive gallery.

• I have also chosen not to publish my book section-by-section due to a technicality I discovered, and have instead released an eBook version that includes the above mentioned gallery access. You can find that here.

• For the small group of people hopeful for an audio book version, sadly I’ve hit pause on that project due to time restraints. I’m so sorry.

💬 One other update, and a contributor to my momentary pause in publishing—I’ve organically fallen into a mentorship role for emerging storytellers and professional creatives. With over 20 years of experience as a writer, photographer, and, more recently, filmmaker, it seems I’ve reached the age of becoming an encyclopedia of what to do (and what not to do!). After this year’s Mountainfilm Festival, the influx of emails and DMs reached a point where I needed to craft a more formal way to offer support while protecting my own creative time. I believe that to be a well-rounded mentor, it’s important to remain an active participant in the craft. Learning and growing together is a beautiful story, too. If this is something you are curious about, you can learn more here.

I will never forget the day I was accepted into UConn’s Department of Pathobiology and Veterinary Science Master’s program to study Comparative Immunology. All the hard work and internships had come full circle. Twenty-four hours later, I received a call that the Head of the Department needed to meet with me; there had been a clerical mistake and they had to retract my admittance.

To say I was shattered would be the understatement of that time. Later in life, I would learn that losing a loved one is far more shattering. However, at that age and time, being accepted and then rejected was devastating. I had no “plan B,” as I was fully invested in working with my chosen advisor. It’s not the best etiquette to court more than one graduate school advisor at a time; this advisor and this program were my first and only choice.

My friends and community rallied, and I managed to enroll in a graduate class to maintain “student status” and retain health insurance coverage. I also secured a collection of part-time jobs, ranging from learning to be a veterinary technician and a sales associate at a marine hardware store to plenty of house, pet, and kid sitting. This allowed me to afford rent and continue living with my roommate who was more like a sister—all of which kept me surrounded by the people who propped me up at the lowest moment of my 20s.

Reflecting back now, I want to look that younger version of myself in the eyes and tell her she can take a day to cry over this. She can hate the world for a moment and wallow in self-pity for as long as it took them to realize they made a “clerical error.” But then, I’d challenge her to find another way. To not give up too soon. Refocus the hurt and consider a different path—a new set of waypoints for an unplanned journey.

I would then remind her of what the Dean told her as she sat in his office fighting off tears: “You were an exceptional candidate and the entire department was so excited to have you.” The decision was not personal.

The reality was a matter of math: I was up against a Ph.D. candidate, and the department stood to lose a percentage of their funding had they chosen a Master’s student over a six-year doctoral track. I wish I had realized then what I know now—that the department truly wanted me there. It was a clerical error fueled by bureaucratic technicalities, not a lack of belief in my potential.

Unfortunately, depending on how you view pivotal life moments, the insecurities of my youth latched on to the rejection like an alligator to its prey. Spinning it around and around, all I could hear were the voices telling me there are no jobs in marine biology. There were monthly reminders of student loans to pay off, and I had to secure my own health insurance. All the while, my close circle of friends was moving on with educations, shiny new careers, and relationships.

Graduate school was off the table, and I followed the lead of other hopeful marine biologists I knew and took a job—still in pathology, but at a place far removed from marine biology. It was a new journey that provided me with invaluable experiences and continuing education in writing, creative problem solving, and technical prowess that serves me well today. At the time it felt like settling; today I see it as a different form of schooling.

The life I envisioned for myself felt shattered in that moment, the pieces hidden away in a dark corner of my mind. I took a well-paid science job where many of my colleagues were former “aspiring marine biologists” who seemed perfectly content with their 401(k)s and corporate perks. We had the salaries, the Starbucks, and the gym. Yet, our office was just up the street from UConn’s Avery Point campus. Every time I did my lunchtime run, I would pass students coming in from their field studies, forced to face the life I had convinced myself I couldn’t have.

In a plot twist none of my colleagues saw coming, I eventually resigned from my high-paying job as a scientist to forge a new path. I didn’t have a map yet, but I knew I couldn’t keep running past the life I wanted.

For nearly two decades, while I did connect a few waypoints that tapped into passions of my youth—like sailing, photography, and art—my life was also defined by what I wasn’t doing. But in early 2023, while scrolling through Instagram, I saw a post from filmmaker Max Romey. He wasn’t looking for a “corporate senior associate”; he was looking for help with a film project that required a unique blend of creativity and technical grit.

Taking a leap of faith, I reached out. I didn’t know it then, but answering that post was the “Plan B” my 20-year-old self never could have imagined. Although I technically had no experience in film, Max saw my complicated CV—filled with years of being a scientist, writer, photographer, web designer, and artist—as a toolbox filled with every skill necessary to become a producer.

For years, I had “buried the lede” of being a scientist because hiring managers found it too “intense,” “intimidating,” or “overqualified.” For the first time since leaving science, Max needed me to own that identity. The CV Max called a “toolbox” was exactly that: my ability to read between the lines of a scientific paper became my ability to help script an impactful scene. My background in research didn’t just support the film; it provided the unbreakable thread. I realized I hadn’t abandoned science; I had just found a more expansive canvas for it.

It took time to reconnect and dust off those old memories and skills, but once I did, I felt at peace. Time slipped by as I unturned the stones of curiosity and dove headfirst into collecting verifiable and irrefutable information about the current state of marine debris, microplastics, and the impact they are having on our ecosystems and ourselves. Turns out, having a background in pathobiology made understanding the “invisible” threats (like toxins) easier, too!

Our film, Footprints On Katmai, earned me my first producer credit and a string of awards from festivals I once only dreamed of attending. While I am proud of the accolades, they aren’t what I cherish most. I’m proudest of the rigorous research that made the story so impactful. I loved the days lost in the science—those hours where time seemed to disappear. In those moments, I was finally that little girl again, the one with big dreams of leaving a positive mark on this planet.

That film project reminded me that I didn’t lose my science degree, and the clerical mistake that derailed my plans for graduate school was the course correction I needed to become who I am today. Exploration and curiosity for a different path welcomed years of unexpected experiences and skills I likely wouldn’t have acquired had my “Plan A” worked out.

Now, I invite you to cozy up with a cup of tea 🫖 and a snack 🍿 to watch the film I am deeply proud to have been a part of:

🧐 I am curious: What unexpected twists and turns has your life taken that would shock or surprise your younger self?

Leave a comment

Hello, friend.

I write from my quiet home on a family-owned farm in Upstate New York with a highly anxious but purely joyful pup, Frankie, at my feet. My days are easily distracted by hens on the loose and happy heifers in the pasture behind my studio. Before the sun rises and the noise of the day intrudes on my thoughts, I reflect on how I got here.

Some mornings, like this one, I find myself more curious than usual about what my younger self would think of the life we’ve lived. It’s colorful and extremely nonlinear, which I believe most lives are, and I don’t consider myself particularly special in that regard.

Tossing it all into a bucket, it would look a little something like this:

Lifeguard. Swim Instructor. Sailing Instructor. Laboratory Assistant. Marine Biologist. Veterinary Technician. West Marine Sales Associate. House-sitter. Dog-sitter. Kid-sitter (there is no sitting in sitter). Senior Associate Scientist. EMS [Eastern Mountain Sports] Sales Manager. Sailing Magazine Ad-sales. North Sails Manufacturing Loft Assistant Manager [that was a mouthful]. Personal trainer. Massage therapist. Sailing journalist. Snow reporter. Ski Instructor. Photographer. Web designer. Graphic designer. Farm Hand. Virtual Manager. Artist. Film Producer. Author. Showrunner (did not even know that was a job)...

My CV is complicated.

Pulling it all apart and attaching little stories to each of these “professional” chapters, it truly has been a colorful and eventful journey thus far. At the same time, it was a hiring manager’s immediate rejection, too. What is much harder to extrapolate is the knowledge collected and how perfectly one new life experience threaded into the next. It was like knitting together my own magic carpet ride that at times felt smooth, and at other times, was trying to buck me off into a deep dark canyon.

My younger self, I imagine, if she were viewing our life like a film might feel all the emotions one could expect of a good drama, but also those of a RomCom gone wrong. There may be some comic relief but also plenty of scenes, like in a thriller, where we all KNOW they should NOT GO INTO THE DARK FOREST ALONE... Yet, there they go anyway... And this is a plot so well known and the ending is always the same yet why the hell do we repeat it over and over again!?

Thankfully, today’s reflections are less thriller and more of a mellow drama suitable for a random Wednesday. With the rising sun, subtle chirps of the finches and lifting fog — I feel warmth, joy and relief in knowing she [younger me] would be ok with where we’ve landed in life. Of course questioning some choices, “Did you really need to live out of our Jeep for a year? Was that really necessary?”

I can imagine pouring her a cup of tea and telling her, “Yes, dear, I had to go so I could arrive here, and here is one of the best places I’ve ever called home.”

For a long time I knew I would be a writer and for a time, I was. It was my first taxable freelance job after I resigned from being a fancy scientist. Which may have happened by accident, however, I’m of the school of thought where accidents are never accidental.

The task of writing is an integral part of being a scientist. Mind you, the style of writing, while I was quite good at it, to me, dreadfully boring. I hated it. Furthermore, what I wrote about was the farthest from why I chose a career in research over a more creative advocation.

Somehow I slipped away from my younger self’s goal of becoming an advocate for the ocean into, brace yourself for this, a Reproductive and Developmental Toxicology Senior Associate Scientist. So yes, on the verge of turning 30, I upped and resign from being a for real scientist, at one of Fortune 500’s top three pharmaceutical companies.

My younger self cringes at the memories, but not because I gave up the generous salary every parent wished for their science loving kid. Because I should never have taken that job to begin with. She [little girl me] wishes I had more self confidence in my mid-20s to have held out a bit longer doing all the little jobs that, with time, would have gotten me to where I wanted to be.

But here’s the thing we don’t tell young people enough: “It’s not meant to be easy or linear.” I’d also like to add, “Worry less about how you get there and keep your sights on where you’d like to go.” Treat dreams like lighthouses, rays of light that guide you around the rocky points and reefs that will try to sink your hope.

If I had been true to my younger self I would have spent less time stressing about how I was going to pay off student loans or afford a new car. I would not have cared about being the only single friend in the group. I’d have been ok with just being who I was in that moment.

She always found her own way to see the light of her dreams through the foggiest of nights and had confidence in her ability to sail through the storms. That lasted until she stopped seeing herself as I see her today: smart, creative, and kind.

So, YES, my dear, it was necessary. All of it was necessary, especially the part where you lived in a box on wheels with your dog. You needed to go out into the wild. You needed the road to disappear over and over again. You needed to lose all of it, too.

Furthermore, you needed to be reminded that you have a voice and reclaim the power to use it.

Which brings us to Waypoints & Waterlines and where this new journey begins. I am unsure where it will take us, except that it is an opportunity to embrace this complicated CV, all the hard and soft skills collected (my father would appreciate that last bit), and explore the unique connections only someone with my particular stories can pull together.

Waypoints & Waterlines will explore the hidden currents connecting our soil, our watersheds, and our collective well-being. This particular focus allows me to reconnect with my dual degrees in Marine and Medical Biology, deep passion for the water, and reconnection with the land.

The latter due to a wild overland expedition that changed my viewpoint around how we care for the earth, while also in part due to living on a farm. All of that combined with more recent work as an environmental impact film producer focusing on PFAS and microplastics. Additionally, and more personally, learning to live with LUPUS. An unexpected twist in the road, but one I know is deeply rooted to the environment we live in.

I am very excited to dive in and welcome you to my crew as we chart this course together. The next waypoint on this journey will be how I became a film producer and reconnection with my geeky college degrees to FINALLY do something with all this dusty knowledge trapped in the back closet of my brain. A waterline of my life I’d thought lost to the tides of change, and grateful that is not the case.

Author Note:

⚓️ To those who’ve known me for a while: I had to disappear to reconnect with my voice and find the light guiding me toward my dreams. Navigating that dark season forced me to focus on where I truly wanted to go. It gave me the clarity to rewrite my book, which is finally shipping! More importantly, it gave me the self-confidence to begin writing for the public again!

🌀 For those meeting me for the first time: Welcome. Academically, I am a marine and medical biologist (holding degrees in both from the University of New England), and I research and produce films exploring the intersection of environmental and public health. You can find my film work [here]—the success of these projects still makes my “younger self” giddy.

✍🏼 My work on Substack is reader-supported.

📆 I publish new articles on Tuesdays & Thursdays, and release sections of my book and/or work-in-progress on Sundays. All written work will be accompanied by audio and imagery by me [no weird AI voices and no stock photography allowed].

Subscribe now

It has been some time since I last shared my life, or work. With a humble heart, I begin again after a few dark years. Disappearing to sit with the life I’ve lived and the one I wish to have. I also wrote and rewrote (about 15 times) my first book, ‘When The Road Disappears’.

A challenging project with years’ worth of false starts before finally becoming something to be held. Work I’m deeply proud of, but also a little embarrassed by, too! However, my ego has come a long way and my heart has been humbled by lessons learned.

I’m stepping back into this space to ask for grace—and for a chance to begin again from a place of love and a newfound joy for sharing stories. After eight years of living a mostly solitary life, adventure buddies would be nice! Therefore I am choosing a different path and welcoming the support of others from the beginning.

Every fresh start requires doing something! My friend Maja Gray likes to remind her community of just that: “If nothing changes, nothing changes.” If I want a life full of light and joy, it’s up to me alone. No one is going to plop me onto the “Joy Train.”

I am taking this refreshed energy to reconnect with my love of writing and sharing stories. I am running alongside that train, and with utter abandonment — I am hopping on to see where this ride takes me next! My only ask: come along!

Reconnecting with my joy was hard fought. During those lonely years I felt a weight of shame and regret that made me question everything. Yet, even in that silence, there was just enough light—tiny pockets of joy to keep me tethered. I like to think it was my younger self shining a flashlight, illuminating singular moments just long enough to keep me present.

Small distractions would make me forget the sadness I was feeling because, “LOOK, THERE IS A BLUE BIRD OUTSIDE MY WINDOW!” Just like that, I would be reaching for my camera and trying to photograph the sweet little bird. Desperate for picture proof of its existence.

Or sometimes, she (my younger self) would be more dramatic and make me step on my dog’s bone, which is akin to stepping on a LEGO (feeling like the parents in this space can relate to that pain). My preference was the pain-free nudges, but in the case of the spiky bone under my foot, it was a reminder that there was [is] a life tethered to my own.

To this day I am forever grateful to the feisty spirit of that little girl version of me. She always knew how to bring the present moment into focus. I don’t think it was a hard task, just one that for a time, required frequent tending.

I’m on this journey for the long-haul and where I would like to leave you today is one of reassurance, especially for my readers who have known me for a very long time. Yes, it got messy, dark and sad. Yet, here I am feeling full of light, joy, curiosity, excitement, humility, and a lot of love for who I became as a result of sitting with myself in the absence of my own light.

Roads do and will disappear. Some are forgotten, and others—thankfully—are rediscovered. I’m glad to be back on this one with you.

p.s. In the next posting I will go a little deeper in the some of what I revealed about myself in the years away from the public eye. Thank you for being here! Jennifer

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Author Note:

To those who’ve known me for a while: I had to disappear to reconnect with my voice and find the light guiding me toward my dreams. Navigating that dark season forced me to focus on where I truly wanted to go. It gave me the clarity to rewrite my book, which is finally shipping! More importantly, it gave me the self-confidence to begin writing for the public again!

For those meeting me for the first time: Welcome. Academically, I am a marine and medical biologist (holding degrees in both from the University of New England), and I research and produce films exploring the intersection of environmental and public health. You can find my film work [here]—the success of these projects still makes my “younger self” giddy.

My work on Substack is reader-supported and will be predominantly free. However, my authored books are behind a paywall to respect copyright and provide a layer of protection against AI scrubbing.

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