A life-long lover of reading and writing, Mary Jo has been a Story Circle Network member for nearly twenty years, serving as an editor, a book reviewer, and a women’s writing circle facilitator. Most recently, she has been a three-time Program Chair for the National Conference, Stories from the Heart, a board member, and facilitates workshops and a women’s life-writing circle. Her stories have appeared in anthologies, and “I Can’t Breathe” is in Inside and Out: Women’s Truths, Women’s Stories. Mary Jo’s degree is in Secondary English Education/Educational Psychology; her work appears in varied blogs and periodicals, on her blog, Facebook, and Twitter. When and how did you become interested in women’s writing? In some visceral sense, I always knew I’d write a book one day. I thought it would be a mystery, until, during my fourth decade, life brought a profound event that changed my life. I immersed myself into intense, diversified personal work for several years in order to process the roots of that mysterious incident. Then my children were grown and I ached to recreate my life. In 2000, I moved 500 miles to a small cabin in the woods of the Blue Ridge Mountains to live in solitude continue...