As I write this, I am in my last week of an 18-year career with Ecolab. On Friday, I will turn in my computer and walk away. When I think back, I remember Arlene McClurg (Math teacher, Southern Hills): She was my mentor and died suddenly early in my 10th grade year. During her memorial service her son Andy shared her favorite quote [Lawrence Durrell, 1959, Mountolive]:

“For those of us who stand upon the margins of the world, as yet unsolicited by any God, the only truth is that work itself is Love.”

Whether because I was struck by that quote when I was 14, or whether it is universally true, I have found it easiest to extend love to humanity from a bit of a distance, through work. I noticed that Theater is not one of the options on the Fairview reunion page under the “Groups you participated in”. Never mind. Fairview-Theater made all the difference in my life and career.

I’ve had months to reflect on my decision. It wasn’t easy but I am finally resolved. I posted the following on LinkedIn:

“One day I decided to retire — but not really. I didn’t decide to retire. I decided to live my life as though there was no tomorrow.”

A lot has happened.

Though they had no idea it was happening, Rita Kotter (Majors) (Theater teacher, Fairview) and my theater friends helped me survive the worst years of abuse. In the rest of my life, the theater lessons Rita gave me prepared me to survive the darkness. As an actress I knew I could act a role even if I couldn’t show up to be that person. My work as stage manager gave me the project management skills that were the foundation of a challenging and successful career. My experience is not unique — many found their way along a path through high school theater club. Most never looked back.

I left Fairview with a scholarship to study costume design, chose to avoid the “casting couch” and left Carnegie Mellon University in 1975. I looped back to Colorado, moved to Denver, and worked in immunology research, briefly. I escaped to Montana in 1979. I used my theater training to front a 17-year career in natural resource / sustainable resource development (solar/wind).

I married Ted Doney in 1983, just as he was leaving state government to launch his Water Law firm. He had a daughter and together we had two more children. Ted was diagnosed with Leukemia 1988 when the kids were 16, 4, and 18 months. When my younger daughter was 2, I was haunted by flashbacks. I took a brief pause in the psychiatric hospital to deal with the dark side of my childhood and the resulting complex PTSD.  Life went on. Ted was my hero – kind and supportive, even as he fought his own battle with cancer. Helena was an awesome community. It was small, slow, safe.

In Helena, I excelled at work. Public schools for our children were a dream. I enjoyed a leading role at the Methodist Church. Our oldest daughter went off to Rice University in Pre-Med. Those were the sweet years. Then, when my son was 7 and visiting my mother in the mountains near Boulder, he had a bicycle accident, and I got the call that he was in critical condition. I pleaded with God to let him live. Rita Kotter (Majors) came to help me breath. A month later we took him home in a body cast. We were lucky; he recovered. But 18 months later Ted’s cancer escalated. He died in 1993. Fortunately, Ted survived to see our oldest daughter marry. That was the happiest day of his life.  Good and bad times – those were the hardest years in most respects, but I was surrounded by unparalleled community. All I had to do was make a phone call, the phone tree would go into action, anything I needed materialized – including the motor home I needed to get Ted to Seattle, were he died.

I resigned my job in 1994 to be the 100% mom my kids needed for a while — and I went to college while they went to school. In two years, I earned my BA in Psychology. By then, in most places, a college degree was required. I planned to leave Montana to finish raising my children in a more cosmopolitan city.

As luck would have it, I remained connected with a friend from Boulder Nomad’s Playhouse. Just before I moved to Montana, he relocated to Minneapolis to get a master’s degree in education. In 2006, he was a middle-school Montessori teacher. I took the kids to Minneapolis for a camping trip and 10 days later he came out of his tent and said, “I think I want to adopt your children and marry you.” Jay Ritterson proposed to me at Christmas, and we moved to Minneapolis after my graduation the next July (1997). Jay adopted the kids, and we embarked on the second chapter of a great life.

I spent several years in Minneapolis doing gigs (grant writing, mediation) so that I could focus on my children as they navigated the big city and finished school. After the 911 Twin Towers bombing, I lost my footing and was mis-diagnosed with Epilepsy and medicated. The drugs took away my ability to think and write, I lost a grant writing job and was unemployed for 18 months. To cope, I started running with the Leukemia Team in Training to raise money for treatment and research.

I accepted a job with Ecolab as an HR receptionist in 2005. I could answer phones and schedule appointments while stoned on mind-numbing Epilepsy drugs. In 2006, my cousin intervened. I went for a second opinion — and after an hour of recounting every episode since high school, that doctor said it clearly was not epilepsy. He took me off the drugs, I got my mind back, was hired fulltime and was promoted. Now I was a recruiter charged with finding engineering talent for Ecolab’s manufacturing plants around the USA. I excelled and received an award for innovation. Because I was filling jobs for our plants, it was essentially a remote job done by phone before virtual technology. I hid in my cubical for the next ten years and finished seven marathons. My children went to college, graduated, and launched successful careers.

In 2015, I gained a Six Sigma project management certificate and changed roles at Ecolab. I landed my dream job – project manager for HR technology  architect, design, and deployment. But, when I found myself in the spotlight, I stumbled. I bounced back in 2017 when I was matched with Sadie. She is a professionally trained Service Dog that mitigates my complex PTSD. Once paired with Sadie, I stepped into center stage and thrived. My manager said it this way, “Before Sadie, you were invisible in a conference room. With Sadie you took control and owned the room.”

I tell everyone that Sadie is the brains. As Project Manager, I’ve helped teams around the world implement HR technology in 29 countries. In 2024 and 2025, the work we’ve done will be expanded to countries wherever Ecolab does business – more than 100. I could continue, excel, and advance in my role but leaving my job opens opportunities for others to grow their careers. Time for fresh horses.

I am grateful for the people who initially diagnosed my PTSD in 1989, for the doctor that realized my “epilepsy” was not epilepsy, for all the research done to finally define complex PTSD, and for Custom Canines Service Dog Academy who trained Sadie to alter my life. Yes, I went through a lot before getting a handle on my disability. It’s like the little boy digging through a giant pile of manure. When asked why he was doing it, he said, “Under all this shit, there must be a pony somewhere.” I kept digging – I’ve arrived at the best life, and I am grateful.