Writer, Poet, Musician, Mother, Grandmother, Wife, Chef, Baker. I could answer to all those names and more. I was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey, raised in Galloway Township, graduated from Oakcrest High School in southern New Jersey. I attended Cedar Crest College in Allentown, PA, and graduated from Stockton University in Galloway, NJ in 1974 with degrees in Philosophy, English Literature, and (almost) music. After that, I taught piano to local children and adults in the 70s and 80s, had a catering business “Jean’s in the Kitchen” from 1980-1992, then went to graduate school at Rutgers CamdUniversty-Camden to obtain my Masters’s Degree in Social Work. Since 1996 I have worked as a therapist and counselor first in New Jersey for five years and then, when our family moved to Maine, in Augusta, Maine for five years. For the past 17 years, I have had a private psychotherapy practice in Gardiner, Maine, During the pandemic, I packed up and moved my office home to Washington, Maine.

In the year of my seventieth birthday, I decided to write and self-publish a memoir about our parents’ World War II romance, Dear Milly. I began blogging on Medium in earnest in 2020 and have posted more than 265 stories including a block of stories about my catering career which I hope to turn into a book some day.

I have been writing and collecting poetry since childhood but never showed it to anyone. Recently, I learned how valuable it could be to join a group for feedback and support for my writing. I have taken several courses and written many more poems and two years ago had my first poem accepted for publication. Now, in May 2023 my first poetry chapbook Not All Are Weeping was released by Main Street Rag Publishing Company. Off in a new direction, again…