As a mother of two, managing a freelance writing career while completing an MFA at NYU, I believe that we must remove stigmas around motherhood. I chose to be a mother who stayed home with her children until they went to school because my work is flexible. But in that position, I bore the expectations of both working women and stay-at-home moms. There was no clock-in, clock-out for either role, both of which were full-time jobs, regardless of what anyone says. My physical energy had to be split between working and mothering, but that doesn't mean I could split my mental energy. Instead, I required a double portion to give both jobs my all. Of course, it's impossible, so the most debilitating consequence is the guilt women face, every day--whether it's choosing a career that will easily allow you to have children someday, working your schedule around your kids', or making the choice to not have children or not have a career. The norm should be this: women have agency in choosing their paths, in a way that is fulfilling to both them and their families. Changing a societal mindset is a tall order, but it begins at an individual level. If I believe in my independence and my right to be fulfilled in something other than motherhood while also loving the moments I am a mother, I give myself power--and I grant power to the women around me making their own choices. This feeling of empowerment is much easier to accomplish with a support system. Yes, I have a partner who believes that I deserve a whole life, and he wants our daughters to grow up with that same confidence. I'm grateful for the support I receive in my marriage; and support can come from other infrastructures to empower women. More childcare options, more education, more non-traditional careers or work schedules, more pay--less judgment, less shaming, less workaholism and unreasonable expectations. These are small steps to take to normalize the human experience of being a woman, to normalize any of her choices, any collection of choices, rather than forcing women into an either/or mentality that, in the end, deprives them of some piece of themselves.

A few years ago, my husband and I, along with our two daughters, left New York City and moved back to Colorado. We made the choice to move into a small town in the mountains, the sort of place where everybody-knows-everybody and you can't go to the grocery store without getting stopped in the aisle by a neighbor. It was a hard adjustment for me. I realized how much I had enjoyed the anonymity big cities can afford. I had to learn the social politics of a town where someone's daddy's family had owned a certain building for the last five generations, and that alone was enough to make a difference in how a business was run. I had older neighbors popping up at my front door, commenting on how we were managing our fire mitigation or where I should send my daughters to school. But then, I met the editor and publisher of our town's local magazine. She took a look at my portfolio and asked if I would like to take over a column in the magazine, writing about town. I said, "What do I know about town? I just moved here!" But Holly thought that was why I was a good fit. It was a fresh perspective, she said. Just be honest, be funny. So, every month, I penned a thousand words or so about my experience of transitioning into a small mountain town from the city. And I received so many responses! Sometimes they were funny--a little snarky even. That only gave me fodder for my next column. More often than not, they were little notes of encouragement, "nice to meet you" messages. Suddenly, in the town where everybody-knows-everybody, I was making connections on a deeper level than some nosy neighbor telling me what to do. I had become a part of (and a voice for!) the community. For me, it's always been easier to communicate through the written word. It's the best place for me to put what I feel deeply into words that are hopefully as meaningful as the message. When I struggled to speak words of appreciation to the man up the street who helped us when our boiler was leaking (practically leaking myself with tears of gratitude!), I know I could hand-write a letter to mail him and truly share how I felt. Through my magazine column, it's like I get to express myself in that same way to my town, every month. I suddenly feel at-home and a part of something--and I have a way to say so. Now when I bump into that inevitable friend at the grocery store, they'll mention my last column. As the townspeople have begun to recognize my name, I've added more work at the magazine, including a column about local music and other feature articles. I've built a platform that has allowed me to promote local artists, revitalize local businesses (especially during COVID), spread the word about special interest projects, fundraisers, and charity events. Sometimes being a writer feels solitary and pointless; but this outlet has given me the chance to truly help my community members in a tangible way. This year, I was accepted into NYU's MFA program, furthering my writing craft. In order to focus and finish the work, I cleared my plate of a lot. But not my column. I could not lose that connection to my town and the way words helped me become a part of it. For as long as we live here, whatever comes next in my career, as long as my editor will have me, I will write for the magazine. It was how I found home.

I would be a different person in a different place without the guidance of Holly Miller. In high school, writing came easily to me. When my small liberal arts college gave me the chance to test out of English, I jumped at the chance for free credits, ignoring their letter asking me to consider becoming an English major. It sounded boring, dusty, old. By nature of liberal arts studies, of course I still had to get plenty of writing in, and as luck would have it, I signed up for an intro to journalism class with Holly Miller. She's petite but fiery, and from the very first class, we had a lot of fun tossing sarcasm back-and-forth. After I turned in my first paper, she asked me why I wasn't pursuing writing for my degree. When I gave her my rehearsed answer, she showed me how little I actually knew about the world of professional writing. A semester of Holly Miller, and I added a communications minor to my psychology degree, signing up whenever she had a class. She would edit my work and go over it with me after hours. My senior year she said, "Sarah, I've found you an internship," and she introduced me to the team at a local community foundation. There, I learned to write grants and manage donor relations, adding some business and social psychology to my skills in writing. Holly, not just a professor but also a well-known freelance writer in that area, was hired to write the foundation's annual report--and she brought me on as her assistant, giving me my first paid freelance gig. She taught me how to track my hours and submit invoices, guiding me through pricing and quotes, warned me about how to save for self-employment taxes, and basically paved the way for me to freelance as a career. After graduation, Holly recommended I consider a master's degree. She was on the board of journalism at Ball State University, had worked with the editor of the alumni magazine. She helped me put together a portfolio, set up an interview. The editor, Charlotte, told me she could see Holly's guidance in my work. I applied to graduate school and was awarded a full assistantship at the magazine. I spent a year completing an MA in journalism and public relations while still freelancing with Holly. I kept freelancing to magazines and non-profits through my first full-time job. A few years later, when I found out I was pregnant, I was able to work from home while raising my daughter (and then another daughter!). I wouldn't have been able to do that if Holly hadn't shown me the way. I would have had to make harder decisions about career and family life. She helped me not only carve out a career, but build a life that felt meaningful to me. Last year, my kids in school and looking for my next step, I decided to apply to NYU's MFA program. The first person I turned to was Holly, though I finished graduate school more than a decade ago. She said, "Sarah, this is the best move. I wish I had done an MFA. This will really set you up." Then she wrote my recommendation--and I got in. I was an arrogant kid when I met Holly Miller, but she chose to see that as a spark and nurture my abilities. It has truly made all the difference in my life and I can't reflect on my work without thinking of her name.

I have been working on a novel for five years, and this year, accepted into New York University's MFA Writers Workshop, I hope to bring its publishing to fruition. Since I can remember, all I have wanted was to publish a novel. I've written magazine articles and blogs, personal essays and short stories; I've had the thrill of seeing my name on a column's byline. But when I was young, it was books that saved me, gorgeous fictions worlds where the characters felt like me--or maybe they felt like someone else entirely, but they let me know them. My bookshelves are color-coordinated with all of these friends and their worlds, and more than anything, I have wanted to contribute to the canon. Over the years, I have had to choose other things first--supporting my husband in his work; raising my two daughters to be their own strong female selves; and making a home where we all feel safe and happy. We've had some adventures along the way too, like the time we moved to Brooklyn, or the time we gave up our lease and traveled Europe as a family for six months. I wouldn't trade these privileges for anything, but now the time has come to write it all down, to take those added experiences and add them to the work I really feel I'm meant to do. NYU's graduate schools have some of the lowest admissions rates in the country. To have been accepted is an honor. To have been accepted on the basis of my work is an infusion of validation and confidence that my words can and should be in the books I dreamed about as a girl. To receive this scholarship would be another vote of confidence toward that dream, and a measure of assurance that I can see this opportunity through to the end.

This question always makes me feel like I have multiple personality disorder. My answer today might not be my answer tomorrow! Sometimes I love a film for the screenplay, the language and character development. Sometimes sweeping, gorgeous cinematography and dreamy light is all I need to feel I've visited another world. Or sometimes it's the soundtrack--a movie I can recall by its music more than anything else. Sometimes, it's simply nostalgia. Forced to choose just one film, a film that incorporates all of these, I default to the 2005 rendition of Pride & Prejudice, directed by Joe Wright and starring Keira Knightley. I think Deborah Moggach's screenplay expertly captures the language of Jane Austen's novel, and it is just as expertly interpreted by all of its actors. The scenery is beautiful, the lighting perfect. To hear the soundtrack in the background nearly brings me to tears. I remember watching it in the theater with my mom, sharing a bucket of popcorn and a bag of M&Ms like we always do. And I remember all the sick days or sad days or ordinary days that I curled up on the couch to watch my own copy of it, so many times I can quote it from beginning to end, and how I can always count on the happy, peaceful feelings it brings me.

2020 was, for me, as it was for most, a year of extremities. I grappled with how to communicate--how to live--some of my life's highest highs and lowest lows thus far. How was one to accept that, while millions were out of work, mine and my husband's gig work was booming? How to accept that, as families around the world bound together to make it through, I saw my own severed over political debate and, eventually, horrifying tragedy? In the wake of this tension, 2020 afforded me inexplicable clarity. It was as if, wrought with noise and horrors, I was able to boil myself, the measure of my thirty-six years, down to a purer thing: my solid, supportive marriage; our beautiful, curious daughters; the roof over our heads and the means for food. Shrouded in this gratitude for a stable foundation, I could ask, for the first time in about a decade, since becoming a mother, if I could take any next step, what would it be? It was almost on a whim--on a prayer, really!--that I applied to NYU's Low-Residency Writers Workshop MFA. I spent a COVID summer constructing essay after essay, dusting off years-old transcripts, trying to remember the language of college. From that clearheadedness, I submitted that application with faith, yes, but also something akin to confidence. It felt like the direction I had to take. On a crispy November afternoon, sooner than I had expected, my phone dinged with a voicemail alert. Playing it back, it took me a few seconds to understand: the program director was calling me, she was congratulating me on my acceptance, telling me that she had read my work with "great admiration." I played the message over and over, unable to squeeze back joyful tears, squealing and confusing my poor dog, the only other in the room when I received the news. In a year when so much was uncertain, I peeled back layers to find something deeply inherent to me, the writer in me who has been waiting for her chance to come out. In a year when so many things came to an end, I found out that I would begin something new. And in a year when we uncovered our traditions of community and storytelling, I was given the chance of a lifetime to build a platform for stories.

By the time our first daughter was born, we had each already had two jobs. I decided to stay home, freelance as I could, raise our children. My husband worked odd-jobs after hours and we sold refurbished items on Craigslist, forcing ends to meet. By the time our second daughter was born, he had added two more jobs to his resume, and we were planning a move to Brooklyn for another position. The story there was the same as it had been every other time: a job that promised opportunity or growth, was actually a dead-end, and we could either deal a new, not agreed-upon arrangement, or leave. In 2016, we were jobless and essentially homeless, making the long journey back from Brooklyn to Colorado, two kids in-tow, and absolutely no idea what our next steps might be. From our temporary home in my parents' basement, my husband resolved to take a business development position at an agency in town, another lateral move that didn't guarantee a sustainable salary in Denver's booming, competitive market. Ten days into the gig, the agency owners changed their minds--they wanted to sell. For a moment, I was consumed with darkness, and it was my husband who saw glimmers of a brilliant idea. The agency, with the quick decision to close, had left a number of small clients blindsided. "We keep relying on other people," he said. "What if we took matters into our own hands?" The rest of my life, I will remember the thrill of those late nights, sitting on the couch after the kids went to bed, splitting a bar of chocolate and brainstorming this idea, this business, that would be ours: Wander Unlimited. We made a lot of sacrifices in those days--even more than we had when we were trying to piece together a life from makeshift jobs. While he was out selling jobs to potential new clients, I was scrubbing the carpets of the only rental property we qualified for with no proof of income. I clipped coupons for groceries and argued with the insurance marketplaces for how to get my children's teeth cleaned and get their vaccinations when my income changed every month. On the first anniversary of WU, almost to the day, we landed a large, retainer client. We solidified a monthly fee, something we could count on, plan on. We also realized, we'd worked our way to what we'd been wanting for so long: freedom. We could make our own plans and lifestyle choices, not based on anyone else's business practices or strategies. We took our business on the road, homeschooled the kids, and spent months working abroad, journeying around the Mediterranean and finding a lifestyle that wouldn't have been ours from the confines of any corporate ladder. Making that dream come true made it feel like any dream could come true--and more have. We've bought a house in the mountains, and our kids attend a great school. And I have been able to focus on a real strength and passion: writing. I was recently accepted to NYU's MFA program, applying to my studies the same grit and sacrifice that it took to start and grow the business that made these dreams come true.

I once told my friend, a fellow work-from-home mom of young kids, the way for companies to get things done efficiently is to hire moms working at home. No one knows the power and possibility of that single afternoon nap hour than the mom who has been counting the minutes until it begins so that she can dive into her work. At the end of 2010, not too far out of graduate school, I was managing communications, donor relations, and private and public sector partnerships for a statewide housing non-profit at the height of the recession. I was busy and learning on the fly, making connections and using that education I had worked for, while also trying to navigate being a young professional in a downturning market. My new husband and I had bought a house, a little fixer-upper bungalow that kept us equally busy on the weekends. Then, I found out I was pregnant, and our world was turned upside down. Managing so much in my job had made me feel useful and important, but my NPO salary wasn’t going to cover childcare and our bills. The difficult decision of whether to continue working or to stay home with our new baby was practically made for me. I left my job and started learning my way through new motherhood instead—on half the income we’d planned for. So 2011 was a difficult year. My husband delivered flowers after his regular working hours for some extra cash. I would fix and resell items secondhand on Craigslist—clothes, furniture, books—while begging magazines around town for freelance assignments. I started contributing to parenting websites and editing content for professional bloggers. All of this, I accomplished in the afternoons, from about 1-3 PM, when I could count on our daughter’s afternoon nap. In 2012, we had our second daughter, and I became a busy mom of two-under-two. Where once I had found satisfaction in pulling together large grants or organizing big events, now I felt accomplished getting us in and out of Target with everything on our shopping list. Despite the discrepancy in that comparison, however, I’d never been more proud of myself, the way I could sustain a life for myself and two other people, every day. It was empowering, and I used that motivation to keep working harder—for myself and for my daughters. My writing gigs were picking up, and I was making a name for myself in the (then) small blogging community. I was awarded a few monthly columns, granting me some regular income and a little more structure to my schedule. Without the first difficult couple of years, I might not have realized how much I loved writing, how it fed me, literally, sure, but creatively as well. I felt more like myself than I ever had. I couldn’t stop writing, even without an assignment to check off my list. Over the course of the next four years, between library story times and preschool drop- off, ever-reliant on that dwindling afternoon nap time, I wrote an entire novel. I was able to workshop it with several writers I admired, all connections I’d made while editing for bloggers in those first sleepy months of new motherhood. I developed a passion and an entire community that I might have otherwise missed. Today, my daughters are nine and eight. We live in a different house (another fixer- upper!) and my husband is the CEO of a small lifestyle brand. I still edit for a few of those blogger friends and I have two monthly columns in our mountain-area magazine. People see me around town and say, “You write for Serenity Magazine!” and it feels incredible to still be building a life on writing, beyond just a dollar-per-word rate. Most importantly, with a little more than the nap time hour, I have refined my writing craft. I’ve uncovered the stories I really want to tell and the means to do so. In the fall, I was one of eight students accepted to pursue an MFA in fiction at New York University’s low-residency program. Working with one of my writing heroes, I’m now dedicating all of my time to telling the story I’ve been piecing together for all of these years. It was as if, with the determination of sheer survival, in that first year of my daughter’s life, I was still carving out my own path too. I dug out the space I needed to do what I believe I was meant to do. My NYU admission will present new challenges, not the least of which are financial ones, and to win this scholarship would feel like a vote of confidence toward what I’ve been working on for so long. I vow to keep putting in the work and to see this next dream come true. Becoming a mother completely changed my life, and only for the better. Since their conception, my daughters have showed me things about myself, about the world, I would have never learned otherwise. I want to do the same for them, want to model for them what life looks like when you dream big, work hard, and then watch your dreams come true.

I love the idea that, I, as a single person, small in stature, can make a change that goes on affecting the rest of the world. When the idea of climate change seems overwhelming, I like to think of ripples in a pond, the way they stretch beyond their point of origin, endlessly. I like to think that I'm modeling a new lifestyle for my daughters, that they'll go on living and teach their daughters. So, in our home, small acts are like a kindness to our world and generations to come. We all toiled together to build the composting bin out back, and we make sure every banana peel gets there instead of the trash. We cut open our lotion bottles to make sure they're clean and prepared for recycling. We avoid plastic where we can, making planned visits to the refill station in town, topping off our amber glass bottles with naturally-made cleaners and potions. My daughters proudly sport their stainless steel lunch boxes in their canvas lunch bags--even though sometimes I know they can't help but eye the pink plastic princess lunch boxes their classmates carry. I dropped a pebble in their pool of understanding, and even though they might wish their lunch came with a sparkling unicorn, they've broadened their worldview and choices to something beyond themselves, even at a young age. I have to admit that my personal choice to try to stay out of the landfills is challenging for me and probably won't have a big impact on the larger problem of climate change. But when we talk about climate change, we're talking about energy; and energy--in the spiritual sense--is something we have the power to shift, even from our own tiny worlds. Make a choice toward kindness, goodness, love, stewardship, and people are bound to notice. Yes, perhaps it makes you odd, you little weirdo with the plain lunch bag instead of a new lunchbox every year; but mostly what people notice is the way that goodness makes them feel. It's dropping a pebble in a new pool, everywhere you go--and that ripple effect is bound to change the world.

It feels as though I've been writing on the internet since its invention. I was an early blogger, just for fun, of the era when meeting people online was novel. I connected with other writers over the turn of a phrase; with other mothers over silly tales in the adventures of child-rearing; with other young adults trying to navigate the delicate process of growing up. At a time when life could have felt very lonely, it was less so because of the writing space blogs had afforded me. There were more tangible perks, as well. I found a steady stream of work while raising two babies, writing for many online magazines and bloggers (please see clips at sarahannnoel.com). The work became serious enough, consistent enough, that I met many of these editors and employers in person. We formed working relationships, creative collaborations that led to bigger projects--creating a print magazine, editing a blog-to-book. I hold on to the memory of these days when writing online felt like writing, rather than self-promotion. Last year, I reached out to a friend's agent about a new potential book project, and the response was, "I like the idea, but how many followers do you have on Instagram." It seemed connecting over the work was lost. When I applied to NYU, when I got in, when I found out that I would be personally advised by some of the greatest authors of our time, I started to look them up on the internet. I found their Instagram profiles, samples of their work, videos and recordings of their collaborations. It reminded me of that spirit of community, what I had found online years before that had not only made life less lonely but had, I realized, birthed in me the start of what would transform into my fiction-writing career. Without the encouraging voices I met along the way, I never would have had the courage. Over the next couple years, I'll be working toward an MFA, developing my craft, creating something tangible--a book, perhaps. But I will never forget that point of connection, the way the internet made people and dreams seem real, before it all dissolved into something filtered and fake. I want my online presence to represent that old hopefulness, drawing on our experiences, surrendering to the vulnerability of sharing them creatively. My writing is now a collection of all of that, and I owe my body of work to the digital spaces that encouraged me to do it in the first place.

There is so much space in the middle of the country. It’s a lot of room to spread out and never encounter someone different—a different color, a different faith, a different political party. Space enough to wander around unaware of any sides or ideologies and instead to exist in an attitude of This Is How It Is. So was I raised in the suburbs of Indianapolis, with guidelines handed down like folklore; guidelines that taught me how to trash my CDs so as not to invite demons into my bedroom, how to wear a sweater over my dress because I was responsible for the sexual impulses of men and certainly not entitled to a sexuality of my own. I could not fathom individuality, only fitting into such a mold, to be safe. Before I victimize myself in what was actually a made-for-TV childhood, I must admit how easily I bought into the system then. Yes, as a child, you accept your known culture as truth, and I also enjoyed, with self-satisfaction, the idea that my private evangelical education and church youth group extracurriculars made me more pious than my secularly-educated peers. Seeds of self-righteousness were planted by (probably) well-meaning authority figures, and I watered them with my need for their approval and praise. Everyone was so pleased, I assumed I should be pleased with myself. My standard was the cultural law and Biblical tradition, and my barometer was how highly my “choices” were held in esteem, therefore, my young life looked very much like what was expected of me: I graduated valedictorian from my tiny, holy school. I went on to a church-affiliated university, where I declared a major in psychology, sating my interest in science, while also receiving the pastor’s blessing because “children’s counselor” is a worthy position of ministry for a woman. On this trajectory, when should have been my coming-of-age moment, the point at which I became the heroine of my own story and rebelled against the status quo? Was it after I’d met the love of my life at a young age, marrying him in purity? Was it after mortgaging a cute bungalow in a city near where I expected my parents to retire? How about after accidentally conceiving the two most mystical and angelic children the world has known? After chasing some lost youth to New York City, back to Denver, around the Mediterranean, and then into the forests of the Rocky Mountains? I was never shocked into my own person, my own choices, rather I slowly came to understand my adolescence of acquiesce had rendered me a stranger to myself. In 2016, after a very brief stint in Brooklyn, my little family moved back west, and I felt like a pioneer, not of the land, but of myself. I was not the first corn-fed, “ex-vangelical” woman sorting out whether or not she grew up in a cult, but I felt distant from my childhood, which was unsettling and made me uncertain about my future. At that point, we were plowing headfirst into many challenges, and at every new and difficult turn of events, I was forced to tear away some black-and-white expectations to which I had held fast since my earliest, formative years. It was as if, beginning my thirties, I had a teenage rebellion. I was furious and entitled and truly afraid that I had somehow missed whatever milestone was meant to be the pivot point of my life. But then again, what if we never outgrow our coming-of-age moments? What if with a family half-raised and several mortgage payments made and a version of a career underway, I was still growing up? Our chain of small tragedies transformed into a bright adventure, traveling Europe with our children for several months. On a beach in Sicily, I read Jonathan Safran Foer’s Here I Am, and as I closed the cover on the last page, it was like a marriage vow. I decided to honor how I had been raised, the ridiculous teachings and the oppressive traditions, simply by accepting them as a part of me, even as a paradox to who I was becoming. Doing so, I found the platform for making my own choices, for forming my own opinions, for using my voice to tell my story. It was a quieter, sweeter thing than I had imagined, realizing that we are always on our way and never do we arrive. “I am still every age that I have been,” Madeleine L’Engle said, and it made sense to me. “Because I was once a child, I am always a child. Because I was once a searching adolescent, given to moods and ecstasies, these are still part of me, and always will be... This does not mean that I ought to be trapped or enclosed in any of these ages...the delayed adolescent, the childish adult, but that they are in me to be drawn on; to forget is a form of suicide.” We are always outgrowing and always growing into, and it is this very natural passage that creates our collective stories. This is my body of work: To honor these stories we hold within us that seem insignificant or even frustrating as we are living them, but are actually evidence of our own glorious humanity; to be an example to my daughters that, at any point in our lives, we can choose the next thing that takes us closer to the thing after that; and to create a collection of minute, important, confusing, messy, and perfect moments, all tied together as a life lived and worth hearing about. And I want an MFA from NYU to be, not only the next chapter in my story, a choice I make for myself, but the means by which I accomplish all the rest, whatever comes after.

I have always considered myself a city girl. I like the energy, the bustle, how there's always somewhere to be and you can get there on your feet. I spent my first years after college in larger cities like London, Denver, and New York. In 2016, we--me, my husband, our two daughters--found ourselves unexpectedly back in Colorado, and in much different Denver than the one we'd once known. It was a struggle to find a rental house near a good school, and when we did, it had only a tiny yard, where traffic was always audible. I would watch my girls, then only four- and five-years-old, making the most of a homemade sandbox sandwiched in between our house and the neighbors'. A delicious twist of fate, and the next year, we found ourselves able to travel abroad for several months. We stayed in remote villages around the Mediterranean, with the sea as our backyard or forests of new-to-us trees to explore. In the quiet air and wide open spaces, I cast a new vision of the childhood I wanted for my kids, and when we returned to the States, we didn't return to a city, rather to a small town in the Colorado Rockies. Here, with our mountain-for-a-backyard, I glance out the window and see my daughters hiking through our pines. Their mud pies line the retaining wall near our house. My husband tied them a swing that sends them high into the forest branches. I nearly lost my stomach when, one afternoon, I looked up from washing dishes and I saw my youngest daughter scale a 20-foot rock with such ease, I'm sure it was the hundredth time she'd done it. Aside from giving my daughters fresh air and space to play, to imagine, to connect with the earth, I have found myself changed by this treehouse we've made home. Instead of the noise of the city, I listen to the wind in the trees. There's nowhere I have to be, and any journey I do make to town winds me through our canyon, following a creek. Life has slowed down considerably, and yet the world seems more vast. I have made for myself a small writing nook in a room full of windows. When I am stuck on a sentence, and I glance outside, the snow-capped peak across the street speaks to me in a way a skyline view never did. I'll take myself for a hike on a sunny day, sit beneath the glittering aspens, and they talk to me too. The creek babbles, most months of the year. And many days a week, I'm greeted by woodland friends, keeping their distance but letting me know they're there--elk, deer, foxes, and that one time I forgot to close the garage door...a bear! When I worked in the city, I was always aware of my short comings. Life was measured in rungs of the ladders we're convinced we have to climb. Here, in my mountains, I'm aware of my place in nature, in a much larger circle that knew how to spin centuries before we ever thought to encase ourselves in concrete. In November, I was accepted into New York University's MFA Writers Workshop, and the residencies are in Paris, so I'll be spending some time in cities once more. But I wrote the essays that won me my acceptance in the swaying fields of Montana, on the open roads of Wyoming, in my own little corner full of trees, and I don't think that's a coincidence at all.

This was the day I found out I was accepted into NYU's Writers Workshop in Paris MFA program. For the last ten years, I've been a work-from-home mom, building a small freelance writing career around raising my two miraculous daughters. This year, I decided that it was time to be even bolder--for myself and for my kids. I want my daughters to have an example of a strong woman who works for what she wants. I want to see that you can keep on dreaming and that dreams keep on coming true.

There is so much space in the middle of the country. It’s a lot of room to spread out and never encounter someone different—a different color, a different faith, a different political party. Space enough to wander around unaware of any sides or ideologies and instead to exist in an attitude of This Is How It Is. So was I raised in the suburbs of Indianapolis, with guidelines handed down like folklore; guidelines that taught me how to trash my CDs so as not to invite demons into my bedroom, how to wear a sweater over my dress because I was responsible for the sexual impulses of men and certainly not entitled to a sexuality of my own. I could not fathom individuality, only fitting into such a mold, to be safe. Before I victimize myself in what was actually a made-for-TV childhood, I must admit how easily I bought into the system then. Yes, as a child, you accept your known culture as truth, and I also enjoyed, with self-satisfaction, the idea that my private evangelical education and church youth group extracurriculars made me more pious than my secularly-educated peers. Seeds of self-righteousness were planted by (probably) well-meaning authority figures, and I watered them with my need for their approval and praise. Everyone was so pleased, I assumed I should be pleased with myself. My standard was the cultural law and Biblical tradition, and my barometer was how highly my “choices” were held in esteem, therefore, my young life looked very much like what was expected of me: I graduated valedictorian from my tiny, holy school. I went on to a church-affiliated university, where I declared a major in psychology, sating my interest in science, while also receiving the pastor’s blessing because “children’s counselor” is a worthy position of ministry for a woman. On this trajectory, when should have been my coming-of-age moment, the point at which I became the heroine of my own story and rebelled against the status quo? Was it after I’d met the love of my life at a young age, marrying him in purity? Was it after mortgaging a cute bungalow in a city near where I expected my parents to retire? How about after accidentally conceiving the two most mystical and angelic children the world has known? After chasing some lost youth to New York City, back to Denver, around the Mediterranean, and then into the forests of the Rocky Mountains? I was never shocked into my own person, my own choices, rather I slowly came to understand my adolescence of acquiesce had rendered me a stranger to myself. In 2016, after a very brief stint in Brooklyn, my little family moved back west, and I felt like a pioneer, not of the land, but of myself. I was not the first corn-fed, “ex-vangelical” woman sorting out whether or not she grew up in a cult, but I felt distant from my childhood, which was unsettling and made me uncertain about my future. At that point, we were plowing headfirst into many challenges, and at every new and difficult turn of events, I was forced to tear away some black-and-white expectations to which I had held fast since my earliest, formative years. It was as if, beginning my thirties, I had a teenage rebellion. I was furious and entitled and truly afraid that I had somehow missed whatever milestone was meant to be the pivot point of my life. But then again, what if we never outgrow our coming-of-age moments? What if with a family half-raised and several mortgage payments made and a version of a career underway, I was still growing up? Our chain of small tragedies transformed into a bright adventure, traveling Europe with our children for several months. On a beach in Sicily, I read Jonathan Safran Foer’s Here I Am, and as I closed the cover on the last page, it was like a marriage vow. I decided to honor how I had been raised, the ridiculous teachings and the oppressive traditions, simply by accepting them as a part of me, even as a paradox to who I was becoming. Doing so, I found the platform for making my own choices, for forming my own opinions, for using my voice to tell my story. It was a quieter, sweeter thing than I had imagined, realizing that we are always on our way and never do we arrive. “I am still every age that I have been,” Madeleine L’Engle said, and it made sense to me. “Because I was once a child, I am always a child. Because I was once a searching adolescent, given to moods and ecstasies, these are still part of me, and always will be... This does not mean that I ought to be trapped or enclosed in any of these ages...the delayed adolescent, the childish adult, but that they are in me to be drawn on; to forget is a form of suicide.” We are always outgrowing and always growing into, and it is this very natural passage that creates our collective stories. This is my body of work: To honor these stories we hold within us that seem insignificant or even frustrating as we are living them, but are actually evidence of our own glorious humanity; to be an example to my daughters that, at any point in our lives, we can choose the next thing that takes us closer to the thing after that; and to create a collection of minute, important, confusing, messy, and perfect moments, all tied together as a life lived and worth hearing about. In this next chapter, I will begin an MFA at NYU Writers Workshop - Paris, and it is here that I will complete a manuscript tackling a narrative of growth, faith, and what comes after both.