Authors, Kai Strand & LA Dragoni

In the beginning of 1990, life stabbed me through the heart. When my 93 year old grandmother passed away, my extended family fell apart. Dying after suffering seven months with bone cancer, my mother left a gaping hole in my immediate family. When I lost my job as a teacher in our church school, I re-evaluated my life. Although I’d been born and raised in New York, living as a single parent in this area had become increasing expensive. My uncle offered me a job in Georgia. I went to visit and fell in love with Atlanta, but my fifteen year old daughter didn’t want to move away from her friends. Here comes the leap of faith! I decided to move 881 miles away from everything I ever knew.   I traveled back to Atlanta a couple of months later to find a place for my daughter and me to live. I looked at a beautiful apartment with a swimming pool and tennis court for $1, 200 a month as well as some for $500 a month rental. Then my uncle informed me that he couldn’t give me that ...

I’m a risk taker, one of those crazy people that tries stuff that seems to terrify others. I think risk takers don’t actually experience the same level of fear as most (normal) people—plus the added adrenaline rush urges us on. I’m the girl who decided at age 10 that I wanted to go into space, and being strapped to the equivalent of a 10 megaton bomb didn’t really concern me. Because it was space —how could you not want that? Sure, it was an incredible amount of work, the chances of actually becoming an astronaut were horribly long, and you could blow up, but the risk of dying was reasonably low, and the rewards were literally out of this world. See? Easy decision. Which was why I was shocked and a little appalled that becoming a writer terrified me. Fear has dogged me every step of the way in this process, from the first time I sat down at the keyboard, to the first time I let someone else read my writing, to the first time I published a novel. But today I’m going to tal...

For the last three days of Share the Love, we change subjects to hear from those who have taken a LEAP OF FAITH at some point in their lives. My first guest, Emily Sonderegger, shares how a nudge off the cliff started her leap of faith.  *** Taking a leap of faith is a lot harder than it sounds. In some cases, you leave behind everything you know and jump off into a whole bunch of unfamiliar. It’s nerve-wracking at best and absolutely terrifying at worst. You actually have to trust in yourself and others. If you have trust issues, well, it’s not going to be an easy road. My chance at a leap of faith came three years ago. I was in a dead-end job and hated everything about it. I wanted to quit badly. I NEEDED to quit, for my own sanity. At the same time, I was afraid to make any changes because, CHANGE!! I’m really not a huge fan of change. Luckily, in my case, the decision was made for me. I lost my job and chose to take my leap of faith right then an...