Biography
I am 48 years old, single and never been married. I graduated from Oxnard High School in 1978. Following that I moved to northern California near Sacramento, to live with my father, where he had relocated after my parents were divorced in 1976. While living there I attended the local Junior College for one semester with no real direction or goal in mind.
In 1980 my father decided he wanted to move to Maui, Hawaii. What a wonderful place to live when you are a 20 year old girl! At first I lived with my father, then on my own for the next 22 years. I worked a lot of jobs to support myself for the first few years: taught swimming lessons, worked in retail, waited tables and cleaned houses. I also took classes at Maui Community College, again with no real idea of what I wanted to be when I grew up.
My house cleaning jobs turned into a business, and I eventually gave up on the idea of getting an education. My thinking, at the time, was I was making a decent living running a vacation rental cleaning business so why bother with school? My business grew and grew, and I was on top of the world, until about the mid 1990's when things started to take a turn for the worse.
My business grew fast, too fast. I was under tremendous stress and I did not have the proper skills to run a business of that size successfully. And, the deaths of both of my grand parents within three weeks of each other really shook me up. I went into a deep depression that spiraled into an even worse drug/alcohol problem. After hitting a deep, ugly bottom, I ended up pennyless and on the street.
Fortunately, loving family members were kind enough to help me get into treatment back in California For almost five years now, I have been clean and sober. I am living in Ventura now with a wonderful man whom I have been with now for almost 4 years. I am a Senior at California State University at Northridge and I hope to complete a Bachelors Degree in Recreation Management in the Spring of 2009.
