About

About me

Hi. I’m Julie.

I’m a writer working on a Big Project that feels important ― important enough that I thought I’d create this website to introduce myself.

After a lifetime doing Other Things, this 50-something mom found herself working as cops-and-courts newspaper reporter in northern Michigan a few years ago.

What I saw in courtrooms and police stations and jails and the drug rehab center and the homeless shelter and the soup kitchen taught me that the world is not the place I thought it was when I was a sheltered, stay-at-home mom.

I no longer work at that paper. My husband took a job about four hours away in southern Michigan, and I’m now doing freelance writing work and writing a book.

But what I learned on my beat came with me. And so did my newfound passion for learning and talking about the public safety issues that impact our lives and communities more than I ever imagined.

I’ve been trying, for this About Me page, to figure out who I am as a writer and who I want to be as a person.

I’m a person who believes firmly in the transformative power of informed compassion. I believe we have to look at what scares us to make bad things better. And I believe we all have the power, right in our small hands, to change the world, one action at a time.

Also, I have three adultish kids, a cute husband, a couple of clingy cats, and a fireplace that makes me deliriously happy. I’m an iffy cook and giggle a lot and lose my car keys once in a while.

What would you say on YOUR About Me page? Send me an email and introduce yourself.

-Julie

Contact me

A word about the photos:

Looking at pictures of myself has always made me super uncomfortable because the person I see doesn’t match the inside me.

Then I asked Connie to help me out, with her fancy camera and trained eye. She met me at Ella Sharp Park and we had a fun, not stressful photo shoot.

When she shared the photos she’d taken, I was delighted.

The person in the photos is the person I feel I am. I hope I don’t seem too vain by sharing them with you as another way to introduce myself.

Thanks, Connie. : )