About Me

At the height of the church’s existence, we were more than 500 members strong with 17 churches throughout the United States and Canada. We had churches in Toronto, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, New Jersey, Idaho, Nebraska and Colorado – where the headquarters for the Emmanuels existed. I say “we” because I had the rare distinction of being born into the Emmanuel Association with more than 50 extended family members also a part of the group. In other words, the Emmanuel way of life was all that I and my family knew.

We had no inclination to know the world outside of Emmanuel life.

This fact alone would be cause for the immense hole left in our lives when my parents decided to descend from the church when I was six. Mix that with the immense guilt my parents felt due to the separation, and their extreme naivety due to lack of exposure, it was the perfect storm, the sublime setting for my life to evolve into a juxtaposed mix of cautious disregard.

We left Colorado and moved back to my mother’s native Ohio. My father became a chaplain in the Cincinnati jail system where he would meet a man that would forever change our lives.

The man was a wrongly imprisoned lawyer, or so he told my father. When he was freed a couple of years after meeting my father, it took him little time to empty my family’s bank accounts, convince them to sell the house and get a divorce, then run off with my mother. My father, embarrassed and heart-broken left too, which meant that I basically raised myself from that point on.

 I went into life with my hair on fire most of the time, lacking healthy boundaries and always trying to work out the “why” behind people’s behavior. As an adult, I said “yes” to life a lot. Wanna get married? Sure. Wanna get a divorce? Hell yes. Want a career change? Absolutely. What if you have to move across the country? I can start tomorrow.

Saying “yes” to life also meant that grass never had a chance to grow under my feet.

I was constantly on the move, which was stimulating and exciting, but exhausting at the same time. I didn’t truly calm down until COVID hit and made the world stop. 2020 is when I decided to leave a successful career in financial services to write. In a corporate meeting in December of 2019, I texted my best friend and said, “If I don’t get out of this bullshit meeting, I’m going to have a panic attack. I need ideas on how to get out of this 3 days of nonsense… and go.” She started with, “Explosive diarrhea?” When we settled on, “makeup to give a black eye to cover the story of a mugging,” I stopped texting and instead wrote a letter to myself that began,

“Dear Audrey,

 

Are you done yet? Have you stroked enough egos? Have you listened to enough mind-numbing presentations? Have you had enough wine? Have you attended enough business dinners?

 

You have to do this baby girl. You have to make writing your career before your soul withers away in this atmosphere. Walk away Audrey. Please walk away…”

I went home and told my husband, “I don’t care if I have to return to waiting tables, the way I did in college. I have to get out of corporate America before I stroke out.” He was hesitant at first. Suddenly I was scared that I was with yet another man who valued my ability to make money more than my ability to be honest and genuine.

But after I read the letter to him that I had written to myself, he said, “Well… I guess you need to get the hell out of there.” He told me that he would support me in any way I needed. And then he said something that will keep me loyal to that man until the day I die. He said, “Babe, what I saw in you the first day I met you… it’s time the rest of the world sees it too. Go tell your stories, I’ve got your back.”

Three months later, I officially walked away from my career and began to write my first novel. The novel was finished in 2021 and I published it in 2022. Now I am ready to really make my true passion my career.