Mentors are hard to come by. But oh, how we need them. I am always hungry to learn, keen to draw encouragement from and witness those that are forging ahead in directions I’m still dreaming of and sometimes I need to glean those moments from strange places. Or from total strangers.

We got married to the strains of The Ronettes’ ‘Be My Baby’ pumping out across the beautiful Zebulon, Georgia fields, wearing a Loretta Lynn kind of dress I bought for $70 on eBay. The moment couldn’t have been more perfect. After a lifetime of swooning every time its unmistakeable heartbeat began, ‘Be My Baby’ was now officially our song. I loved the special spiderweb connection I could feel crisscrossing America between me and Ronnie Spector.