Grayson Highlands State Park in Southwest Virginia . . . One of my favorite places in the world

Hi!  Thanks for checking out my blog.  In case you don’t actually know me in real life, I am a 20-something nurse who grew up in a very small town in Virginia.  I now live in the Raleigh-Durham area of North Carolina with my husband & adorable welsh corgi puppy named Chaucer.

I am a firm believer in honesty, hard work, freedom, compassion, personal responsibility, & the power of a kind word or deed. I love classical music (especially Russian) as well as playing piano & flute, hiking, photographing nature, & reading.

This is me at Grinnell Glacier at Glacier Ntnl Park in Sept 2014.

I have a special fondness for working with the elderly & am strongly considering working in palliative care/hospice in the future. I believe the end of life is just as sacred & precious as the beginning & should be honored as such. I also desire to eventually teach nursing  some day.

One of my goals in life is to be that crazy grandmother who still listens to hard rock & heavy metal.

I am a perfectionist & tend to expect way too much from myself. I always see the best in others but am still working on how to focus more on the best in myself.

I struggle with anxiety, but I’ve found that this blog is a great way to tame the “anxiety monster.”

I titled this blog after a poem I wrote in the middle of the night last year.  So much of the time my mind seems to be lost in “a thicket of musings” so I decided to start this blog as a way to share my poems, essays, photographs, & general thoughts, ideas, & questions about life.  Popular topics on this blog include music, nursing, marriage/relationships, feminism, humanism, & anxiety/mental health issues.  I occasionally share some recipes too.  I hope you will join me in A Thicket of Musings.