ABOUT - Betty Brandt Passick

A few ramblings about my journey…

When I retired a decade ago, I launched a career as an author – a dream I’d held since a young girl. That dream began with an ‘awakening’ while walking home from the country school to our farm with two older brothers, captured years later in our family’s book of history We Are Eight, a Memoriam (2015). That day I realized I saw my world in stories, which I had begun to store in the deepest recesses of my brain.

"Sometimes we raced part of the way home, our books and papers and lunch cans banging against our sides with each stride. Other times we walked gingerly, without a care in the world, kicking pebbles down the road, watching the brief shower of dust evaporate before our eyes. There were pronounced periods of silence too, when our brains pondered learnings and contemplated profound thoughts. Perhaps it was a on such a day that I experienced what I would later say was tantamount to a tremendous 'shifting of the earth’s core' beneath my feet. On that day a door opened ever so slightly and let in the slightest sliver of light. Suddenly I had questions that I had never considered before: Where did the water in the stream come from? From where did it flow? And the sky? The trees? The cows? Us? From that day forward, I began to listen to adults much more intently (they knew a lot more than did us kids). I wondered if they had also wondered about these things, and if so, had they found answers to their questions. I was still a shy girl who thought about a lot of things without saying much outloud. Thereafter, I vowed to intentionally eavesdrop on all adult conversations and deemed to ask a lot more questions. My curiousity only grew... I had so much to learn."