I created Babbling Brookes in 2009, when I realized I enjoyed writing more creatively and personally than was appropriate for blast email messages to a college community. In early 2010, life took an unexpected turn when my partner was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. I found it difficult to avoid writing about our experiences and my thoughts and feelings, but writing truthfully when my truth was so different from my partner’s made it difficult. When she died, in late 2012, I began to release a flurry that my audience told me resonated with them, so I decided that when I was ready, I would write more.
Eventually, I took some writing classes at Grub Street, including one as difficult as I’d expected, called “Writing to Heal.” Since then, I’ve been writing essays, including but not constrained to being about caregiving and grief, and so relaunched Babbling Brookes with the expectation that I’ll keep on writing. I welcome your correction and suggestions. I’d call that “feedback,” but the word always reminds me that it originally described the piercing noise created when electronic sound doubles back on itself, like a microphone picking up its recording from a near-by speaker!
I have many other lives. Professionally, I call myself a “collaborative problem-solver.” I have many years of leadership experience in technology in higher education. I’ve trained as a mediator, and am learning to be a circle leader. I am a soccer coach turned player. And I’m a parent to our son, now in his mid-twenties.
For my a partial professional portfolio, please see KimberlyBrookes.org.
