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Digging in the Dirt of Life
I published my first scientific article in 2009. I started blogging in 2010. I published my first book in 2011. Things have changed since then. When I published these "firsts", I was terrified that trolls would come out from under the bridge, find me, and ridicule me. Maybe even stalk me. Instead, I published to... Continue Reading →
I put my podcast Scattered: One Person's Search for the Story Behind Human Remains on hiatus in April 2025. It was taking too much time and energy away from what I wanted to be doing: writing and being creative. While I stopped producing podcast episodes, the podcast itself has remained live and available. It also... Continue Reading →
How does one look for a needle in a haystack? (Because that is an apt analogy.) You just go look, right? Again, we find "common sense" making another appearance here: "Just go look." When I gave presentations to search and rescue groups, I discovered that usually these groups were only being trained on how to... Continue Reading →
What's been happening in my world? This. Finally. Two years' worth of writing, revising, submitting, being rejected, submitting again, being rejected again, then revising and submitting AGAIN. This was after doing the research and gathering data for 2 years. This is part 2 of a 2-part series that began in 2023 with the scavengers in... Continue Reading →
Controversiality trigger warning: sometimes I use genAI during my writing process. If you don't agree with this, feel free to skip this post. Last night, I sat in front of the TV re-watching Stranger Things as I typed and chatted with Chat GPT. Me: I'm seeing how the Duffer brothers introduced Hopper, the boys, Joyce... Continue Reading →
In the last blog post, I outlined whether or not to search for human remains in cases that are well over a year old. A year or more is a long time; surely the remains have scattered to the four winds. Is it worth doing a search? Yes, just keep your expectations low and tailor... Continue Reading →
A colleague recently reached out asking about the limitations of recovering bone after a certain amount of time. It seems law enforcement were expecting to find remains five years after the person went missing and was presumed deceased. (This is located in Western Canada.) In essence, my colleague was asking me if law enforcement should... Continue Reading →
You’ve walked through the fog.Faced the wall.Felt the fire.Looked in the mirror.Held the thread. So… now what? Now you get to remember you’re not alone.That healing doesn’t have to be linear.That stories—even fiction—can help us map the terrain we’ve lived through. The Main Gate isn’t just a book about space travel.It’s about trauma, trust, and... Continue Reading →
“I'm still here.” There comes a moment in the healing arc that’s so quiet, you almost miss it. It’s not triumph.It’s not resolution.It’s something smaller… and infinitely more sacred. It’s the thread. Not the full tapestry.Not a rebuilt self.Just one shimmering thread that says:“I’m still here.” After the confusion, the grief, the anger, the mirror—there... Continue Reading →
“I see me now.” After the fire, there’s silence.Not the empty kind.The sacred kind.The kind where something inside you is finally ready to look. Not at them.Not at the past.At you. And it’s not always easy. You see the ways you twisted yourself to fit.The parts of you that went quiet to keep the peace.The... Continue Reading →
The Reluctant Archaeologist