Sarah navigates Regina’s deep interests in western horse riding and team sports. Regina owned two horses, “Beauty” and “Snow White.” Many visits with Dad and Regina included horseback riding and equestrian-related activities. All three of her kids played baseball, the two boys played peewee football, and Crystal was a cheerleader.

Sarah describes the home Regina and Dad fostered in rural North Florida. The cobbled-together new house and Regina’s aversion to using air conditioning make for a less-than-ideal living experience for Sarah and her sister.

Spring 1988

My father picked my sister, Juliet, and me up from elementary school on Friday, as he did every other weekend since he and my mother divorced the year before. He stayed in the house we had lived in as a family while my mother, sister, and I moved to an apartment in town.

This is the introduction to my memoir, I’m Over It, I Think?, a memoir of my life growing up in the Florida panhandle in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

It is a peek into nearly a decade of emotional abuse I experienced at the hands of my stepmother and the way it colored the rest of my life.

NOTE: Names were changed to keep involved parties somewhat anonymous.

To genuinely close the wage gap, women need to be paid more than men in order to be on the same financial level.

On a typical Saturday afternoon, while doing dishes, my nine-year-old daughter, Leighton, walked into the kitchen looking bewildered. When I asked her what was wrong, she said, “Somebody burned something in the bathroom.”