Several pivotal events changed my life for the better.

Flute

In the fourth grade, my father let me choose my own instrument. A professional jazz trumpet player, Dad insisted that all four kids play an instrument. Playing flute has provided emotional expression, great comfort and delight throughout my life.

Scholarship

At age 19, I got a scholarship from two elderly sisters who paid for my last two years of college at the University of Michigan. They changed my life. Volunteering as a college mentor is my way of paying it forward.

Hiking is my Passion

After graduating from the University of Michigan at age 21, I moved to Washington State to climb mountains, and stayed. Hiking is an uplifting, transcendent experience for me. I feel most centered and grounded in the mountains. Photos:

1. High on a ridge in Olympic National Park, age 25.

2. Ingalls Lake with my future husband, Terry, at age 28.

3. Beautiful Spider Meadows, age 62.

My most pivotal event was my exodus from Moronism (oops, Mormonism). Here is an excerpt from my autobiography, starting when I was still a Moron (oops, Mormon):

Zealous to convince others of the truth, I started to study the prophecies of Joseph Smith in earnest. I was confident that Smith's divine ability to predict the future could convince any honest skeptic who dared to look at the evidence. To my surprise, I discovered the opposite. On close examination, Smith's prophetic ability did not impress me at all. His prophecies seemed stubbornly to resist any kind of convincing fulfillment. I delved into the scriptures, hoping to find some error in my research. The more I studied, the more I doubted Mormonism.

I asked the Bishop to help me understand certain passages of Mormon scripture. His weak explanations were far from satisfactory. I continued to study, and I continued to lose faith in Mormonism....

The final blow came during a conference when a speaker seemed to misinterpret a passage from Isaiah. I knew from my studies that the passage was one of several that the Church and its prophets habitually interpreted in a way that was not originally intended. Disgusted at what I perceived as the Church's ignorance, I stomped out of that meeting and drove to Longview Lake in Grandview, Missouri. I recall standing on a particular rock, holding onto a particular tree, looking out over the water. I prayed to know whether the Mormon prophets -- who didn't seem to understand the Old Testament -- were sent by God. I struggled with the apparent discrepancy between my intellect and my religious tradition. There on that rock I surrendered to my intellect. A soothing peace came over me. I convinced myself that the modern prophets were false, that I didn't have to pay any more attention to them, and that Mormonism was a false religion. I convinced myself that my covenants and temple vows were made under false pretenses, and I was no longer bound by them. Letting go of my past, I felt free from Mormonism, free to think for myself.

On December 3, 1988, I was excommunicated for apostasy....

Having to raise my granddaughter.

I am British and my family have lived in one of two North of England towns since 1602. Boring old buggers. Only my generation have all lived overseas. I think that has altered mine, my sister and my cousins lives forever.

After graduating from College in Canada, I could work med/surg for several years before having a chance to get into a specialty... OR I could come to Texas go into a specialty immediately(you don’t need experience in the states). My impatience got the better of me and shaped the next 25 years.

Yep. Just one damned thing after another. It has been a terribleupdownmarvelous ride and I wouldn't want to change any part of it because I think that would ruin it.

When I was 16, Eharmony introduced my mother to a long con creeper who she almost immediately had move in with us. I moved myself n my sister out for a year with my grandmother, got us a lawyer pro bono through a school counsellor and vehemently fought it, but the courts forced us back to living at home. They mentally abused me til I was out of the way and he gradually got us all comfortable enough to let our guard down before he did some significant creeping on my sister, which was hidden from me for nearly a decade because they knew Id murder him and go to prison. The extent of it I still don't know but I think he drugged her at least once if not many times. My mother discovered it soon somehow and threw him out, began legal proceedings but my sister wasnt mentally well enough to face him and testify in court so he took a plea deal n got off light. Might have spent a few months locked up before he was out. So I went to college thinking everything was fine n wasnt til 5 or 6 years ago that I learned the truth about the divorce n was able to start processing it, the heinous realization that Ive never wished I was wrong about more. I spent several months in a hellish angry spiral trying my damnedest to figure out a fool proof way to torture the bastard and get away with as heinous a murder possible before accepting that I couldnt. Did at least make sure he knew I knew where he was living and scared him into moving back to Georgia. Ive still got a great deal of PTSD and survivors guilt from it all. At one point during the custody battle something broke in me and now if I get angry enough I get this spastic tick in my eyebrow like you see in some vets probably. You wouldnt like me when Im angry.

Joining the Marine Corps at 18 was very pivotal. I Grew up very fast, learned responsibility,team play and just plain how to take care of myself. I also learned how well prepared I was because of my upbringing compared to many others. It was a very real experience and I am still proud of having served and meeting others who served in the Navy and Marines. We have had a very long brotherhood.

Everything is at the end of a long causal chain. In hindsight you can always find "if onlys" that seem like turning-points, but who knows. If only I hadn't married my first wife, or got her with child, not once, but twice ... my life would have been vastly different and probably better, but who is to say I wouldn't have married someone equally disastrous and besides ... I had two children, one still living today, and would I wish them out of existence. Well, no.

Such hindsight is both 20/20, as they say, and kind of useless in my view.

Sometimes I indulge the fantasy, what if I could somehow go back in time, knowing and remembering both everything I have learned in life, and recalling the context of my 15 or 16 or 18 year old self, and get a "reboot" from someplace in my teens. I would have attended a different school, would have put off marriage or even romantic entanglements for many years, and would have put every spare dime into Intel and Microsoft stock, to sell off just before the dot-crash of 2000, and so forth.

But would I really be "Mordant 2.0" or maybe just 1.1? Would I fare that much better? Perhaps I flatter myself to think I'm that much wiser or clueful. Even if I completely evaded the particular pitfalls I got myself into in my early adulthood, I might simply have fallen into different ones.

So sure you might have evaded the draft if it hadn't been for the SST project, but in doing so, you might have gotten run over by a bus or caught a fatal disease or met a woman who really fucked you over in ways you can't imagine. Who knows? Life is what it is. You make the best of it as you go.

Mine was nothing so dramatic. I was watching Drew Carey's Mr Las Vegas all Night Party and I saw the Reverend Horton Heat for the first time. It completely changed how I thought about and played music, which for me is huge. I see this guy playing all these jazz chords and it's still rock-n-roll. I had all this information in my head I suddenly knew how to use...

Yes, my brothers decision to play music for a living when he was 23 and l was 25. It completely changed the direction of a career in advertising to a career in music.

Losing my Dad made me realise just how unhappy I was in my marriage .It gave me the impetus to change things and get out of a toxic relationship.It also was the realisation that life is way too short to be miserable .

I lived in Korea four years. I had been raised with certain expectations, get married, have children, stay married until I die. Then I would get the highest rewards in the next life. While in Korea I tried to open my mind to the perspectives of the people there. I didn't write anything off as untrue. I questioned whether men had a right to subject women. I questioned the different aspects of the rigid social system there. I experimented with different ideas, trying them out in my life to see what would happen.

By the time I left Korea, the fundamentals of my beliefs had been ruined. I knew my religion wasn't valid. I knew my marriage was not what I wanted. I wish I could say I was in a more stable place but I wasn't. I was caught in this in between space where I was trying to sort out what was good and what was bad along all my old and new beliefs. Shortly after returning from Korea, my life exploded and I lost everything.

I found no peace for two years as I continued to hold on to my religious beliefs, now outside of the church structure. Life continued to throw the most hurtful circumstances at me that I could ever have imagined. Finally one day I couldn't reconcile my religious beliefs anymore and I let them go. It was so hard to do and I felt betrayed, depressed, and confused. But I also began to feel peace again. I began to make rational choices that slowly changed the volatile circumstances I was in.

I'm still healing but I feel confident in being able to eventually build a good life that I shape myself. I'm no longer waiting around for an invisible being to fix things for me. I can fix them myself.

I had been working as a professional graphic designer for about ten years for a couple different advertising agencies and at the time was freelancing for several large agencies. One day I had a "wild hair" idea to apply for a job at a university teaching graphic design. I included samples of my work and the chairman of the art department of a large university had a last minute need for an instructor at the same time he received my resume. I was called in for an interview and he hired me for two classes. I taught those classes for a semester and I liked it a lot but thought I could make more money in my own studio. I declined the offer for more classes the following semester but quickly realized how much I missed teaching and interacting with students. It was a well known university and a great part time gig. I knew that I had made a huge mistake (pivotal point!). The next semester I applied again put I had pissed them off and they never even responded. At that point they saw me as a flake, which in hindsight, was a reasonable conclusion. A friend taught graphic design at a trade school and got me on teaching there but it was a far smaller school and I got lousy classes. I applied for an administrator position at another private school just starting up. They said they had filled the admin position but would I be interested in teaching? Of course I said yes and began teaching full time and continued to teach there for the next 14 years. It was the best job ever and the people were great. They even paid all tuition for me to get a Master's degree at a different school. Several years later they even paid all tuition for my son to get a bachelor's degree.

1973, bought an airline ticket to Seattle and came out to visit a friend. It was a visit that did not end, never went back to New Jersey.

My Dad stayed in the army after ww2. i had a normal happy childhood until 11 when he got transferred to montreal. up until that time i had an almost 'leave it to beaver' life. grandparents right across the street whom i was very close to. aunt & uncle & cousin 3 blocks away.
i then found myself in an alien environment in which french was the main language.
i fell in with a wrong group of kids was drinking & quit school at 14. was in court a few times but somehow stayed out of jail.
ending up joining the navy at 19 & got straightened out in 15 weeks of basic training. got into boxing which i was good at.
the drinking really started in earnest when i got to a ship. we got tots (2 3/5 oz) of 180 proof rum in those days. always got totally out of it whenever we had money & got ashore.
my drinking to excess continued right through into my 70s & if it wasn't for my heart condition i'd still be binge drinking.
i sometimes wonder how/why i'm still alive.
also wonder what my life would be like if i'd stayed & grown up in toronto.

Thought ..no, I’d wanted to become a Cop. Nearly completing the newly required college program (Portland, OR), I fell in love… Then I wanted to continue living Next inherited the family homestead in redneck Oregon, but moved there anyway with my enthusiastic young wife. Kinda set the stage for the next 3 decades, with a lot to show for my/ our efforts, both adding to the ‘farm,’ building a new home, raising 2 children, and intense community involvement..

Marriage over, Century Farm sold ..It’s hard to pin down any ‘one event’ … though missed Vietnam by age alone.. Research led me to where I’m at, on the Blue Ridge in Virginia. Damn … life ~

Where should I start. I'll make it as short as I can. Sorry for being vague. If am to mention details then this would take me a lot of time to finsh. So I was born in the war that killed my father and had to watch my family suffer. Then anther war where my mother had to protect my and my sisters. Then grew up in economic sanctions that starved us. Then the invasion happened followed by terrorist attacks. Death was the norm. Then the sectreian war happened and I was meant to be killed because of my family heritage. Then four years of terror and fleeing from one inhospitable country to anther. By the time the UN brought us to the USA in the midst of the economic collapse, I was already broken and tired. Yet again, I had to rebuild my life. And here I am. Ten years from that date and still struggling to secure my future. I didn't give up yet, all thanks to the people I care for. Keep fighting, life is struggle, enjoy it while you can.

When I was 19 and in the Army in Germany, found out my duty post was 5 kilometers (little over 3 miles) from the East-West border. If the cold war ever went hot I was dead. It's kind of hard being 19 and bullet-proof one minute and facing your own mortality the next.
I have no regrets about serving in that unit, I found pride and loyalty in myself that I didn't know existed. I found a brotherhood that no fraternity or organization could come close to matching. I love my brothers-in-arms and will answer their call for anything.
I miss that more than anything in this life.

I got a job offer in another country and I took it, even though it meant leaving my whole life behind. 23 years later it is still the best decision I ever made.

I told my incompetent father that he was driving the family farm into the ground. I quit him and reinvented myself and became a college art professor. And now I'm back in control of the family farm. Full circle.

Oh, yes. The first major fork in my road, by sheer accident, was being stationed in West Berlin at the height of the Cold War. I grew up in a religious family in the heart of the very conservative and racist southern bible belt. In my senior year of college, breakup with a serious girl friend caused me to lose focus on school and a dropped up . With the military draft staring me in the face, I volunteered for the draft. After completing basic and advanced training, I was sent to Ft. Dix, New Jersey for reassignment and was sent to Berlin. The only problem was that I had been trained as an artillery surveyor and there was no artillery in Berlin. But,l the political, intellectual, and social climate caused me to become a very different (and better) person.

Later, teaching in a high school I called "Mediocrity high" led me to decide to devote the rest of my career to improving teaching and learning in our public schools. That was another major fork.

My life has been nothing but wrong turns and bad choices. Do I regret them? One or two, but I hope for the best and keep on living.

Age 34... widowed with 4-year-old
Age 47... grand mal seizure, brain tumor removed, next 10 years on anti-seizure medication
Age 51... divorced, first time in 30 years no one relying on me, trauma, suicide thoughts
Age 55... close business, few possessions in storage, next 3 years transient life in China
Age 64... death of remaining parent