Hi, I’m Paige…

Welcome to my writing space. I started writing in a diary before I could form full sentences. I have shelves of journals chock full of teenage angst and details of my lovesick 20s. I spent a decade writing a blog while I adjusted to my new identity as a Mom. Turns out I only know how to understand the happenings of my life by writing my way through them. If I didn’t write about it, it’s as if it didn’t happen. Our lives are made up of stories. I have so many stories to tell.

Diaries to journals to my old blog to….here. I’m writing, trying to do bold things, summoning my courage to show up here and be myself. My dream is to write. And tomorrow is too late.

I have degrees in English and Chemistry from the University of Kansas and a PhD in Physiology from the Mayo Graduate School. By day I’m a Professor of Physiology, performing research on how lifestyle modifications like exercise and heat therapy prevent chronic disease. I live in Kansas City with my husband and two children.

I am writing a memoir about the year I began my academic research career at the University of Florence, Italy. I arrived in Florence in the fall of 2001, one week before 9/11 occurred and the world turned upside down. I was 28 years old, naïve and ambitious, full of ideas of how my life would go. But nothing about that year went as planned, and the heartache, love and community I found there left me forever changed. FLORENCE EVER AFTER is a story of science in a city of art, a story of love, friendship, identity and the choices women make that define their lives.

I hope to publish my memoir someday.