Hello! I’m an autistic author living with hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (hEDS) and Congenital Stationary Night Blindness (CSNB from a mutation at my SLC24a1).
I graduated from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette with a Bachelor’s (B.G.S.) in Arts and Humanities in 2005.
I was the Humanist Visionary Award recipient in 2015 for envisioning the first national humanist disaster recovery volunteer program, Humanist Disaster Recovery Teams, as well as the Atheist Impact Award recipient in 2016 for developing that program through Foundation Beyond Belief, later renamed Disaster Resilience Teams and run by GO Humanity. I’m Secretary of the Board of LymeTV, lobby with Center for Lyme Action, and volunteer through many local organizations.
While I am a humanist, embracing people of all religious and cultural backgrounds, I’m most well-known for outing myself as an atheist to Wolf Blitzer after a tornado destroyed my home in Moore, OK in 2013. My atheism is agnostic, meaning I don’t claim to know; I just am being honest that I haven’t found a way to believe.
I live in Tacoma, WA with my spouse and our five children, two cats, and leopard gecko.