“I had to completely reinvent myself.” Jan
You don’t always get to choose a new path.
Sometimes life places you on one.
And you find your way through it.
Rick was her love.
The kind that doesn’t just come and go
but becomes part of who you are.
She didn’t start writing because she always wanted to.
She started because there was a story that needed to be told.
Not just hers, but Rick’s too.
So she did something brave.
She went back and learned how to write.
Took classes.
Figured out how to shape something that felt almost impossible to put into words.
Rick made this guitar in prison.
It didn’t happen all at once.
Life was still moving.
And in the middle of all of that,
she kept coming back to the story.
Learning how to stay with it.
By the time she began writing, her daughters were grown and gone from home.
Both were married.
She spent time caring for her grandchildren,
those early years filled with family, love, and showing up where she was needed most.
And in between those moments,
she went back to school and took creative writing classes.
Then she began writing the story.
It took four books to tell their story.
Four.
Because some lives don’t fit neatly into one telling.
It wasn't something she figured out overnight.
So, she learned.
Not just how to write,
but how to take something this personal and layered
and turn it into something others could step into and feel.
And somewhere in the middle of all of that, writing stopped being something she was trying to learn.
It became part of how she carried him.
Part of how she kept going.
She's not done!
Her writing doesn’t stay in one place.
She moves between fiction and historical fiction, telling real stories through imagined characters and giving herself the space to say what needs to be said.
There’s poetry, too.
Short pieces.
Her Monday musings.
She’s part of a writing community that continues to challenge and support her, and somewhere along the way, even her 14-year-old granddaughter’s poetry found its way into her most recent book.
The stories keep evolving.
She’s already started another one, and if history is any indication, it will take the time it needs.
Usually about nine months.
The detail is exquisite.
"His hands were never still."
He even had access to a kiln in prison.
No words to describe this fantastic lamp.
She’s surrounded by him.
Not in a way that feels heavy, just present.
The artwork on the walls.
The pottery.
The lamps.
Pieces carved from wood.
Even the small things.
Rick made all of it.
Some of it during the years he had nothing but time.
Even then, he was creating.
You can feel it when you’re there.
His work isn’t just displayed. It’s part of her everyday life.
In Discovery, pieces of his art live on in a different way.
Woven into the pages.
Still part of what she’s creating.
“Music has always been a part of my life.”
“There’s an energy between a performer and an audience that you can’t find anywhere else.”
“Long before the spotlight, they were already in it.” A portrait of Willie Nelson, created by Rick.
Music wasn’t just something Rick loved. It was who he was.
Long before the world knew names like Elvis or Willie Nelson, Rick was already in those circles - close enough to witness it, live it, and carry it with him.
Even when life placed him behind walls, it didn’t silence him. He kept creating. Guitars. Art. Music.
That part of him never stopped.
And it never left.
There are stories that fade with time.
And then there are stories that refuse to be forgotten.
Rick’s was one of those.
And somewhere along the way, Jan knew -
it was hers to carry.
Her father made this chair by hand during the Depression.
He made many of them.
Each one sold for a dollar, just to help put food on the table.
A small way to get through a very hard time.
Years later, this one found its way back to her.
She still has it.
And with it, a piece of that time.
Her morning ritual. A cup from Dublin. Coffee from her grandson.
“With every breath, you learn.”
There’s a quieter rhythm to her life now.
Mornings that begin the same way.
Coffee in a cup her grandson brought back from Dublin.
Pops coffee, her favorite, something she makes sure she never runs out of.
She’s always been someone who notices the deeper meaning in things.
Not in a loud way, but in the small, quiet symbolic way that most people pass by.
Stones by the window and throughout her space.
Moments that invite her to slow down and reflect.
It’s not complicated.
But it’s full.
A Jan-Rick Collaboration of poetry and art.
Detailed Pointillism by Rick
“There’s nothing I love more than losing myself in a story.”
She is an award-winning author. Something she doesn’t lead with, but something that reflects the depth of what she’s created.
Spending time with Jan, it becomes clear pretty quickly.
Rick wasn’t just someone she loved.
He was the center of her life.
Their story wasn’t a straight line.
There were years they were apart.
Life moved in different directions.
And then, it brought them back to each other.
They built a life together that lasted more than twenty years.
A love like that doesn’t disappear.
It stays with you.
You can feel that in everything around her.
In the art.
In the music.
In the stories she continues to tell.
Her writing isn’t separate from her life.
It is one of the ways she keeps him close.
She was with him through the end of his life.
Rick.
You see him in her home.
Not as something from the past,
but as part of her life still.
What stays with me most about Jan isn’t just her story.
It’s her strength.
The way she has lived through a love that shaped her,
and found a way to keep going after it was gone.
And now, what matters most is clear.
Her family.
Her children.
Her grandchildren.
She keeps them close, and you can feel how deeply that matters to her.
She told me she would mourn that closeness if it weren’t there.
And you believe her.
Because after everything she’s lived,
she knows exactly what matters.
