My name is Jean and my mother’s name is Jane. My mother had no idea why she liked the name “Jean” so much but immediately when I got home from the hospital my brother said “Welcome home Jean!” my mother thought he said “Jane,” and so began a lifetime of confusion. The adventures of Jean and Jane are something I would have scoffed at in middle school and high school. I would have sooner died than shared pictures of myself on facebook with my mother who was 37 years older than me. However, in times of sorrow we joined together to become lifelong adventure partners, and as we continue traveling the globe together seeking waterfalls and mountainscapes the memories only continue growing.

      Time heals all wounds and time makes fools of us all. This could not have been more true for my mother and I. Between spending the night on the top of a mountain surviving by the heat of a hot spring, helping a Tinder date half my size carry his recently deceased dog that was also twice his size, and watching my mother be carried down a mountain by a man half her size, we learned a lot about one another and ourselves. These stories are more than just funny tales from my life. These adventures of self-discovery were at an age when my mother and I felt like we already knew ourselves. These are the stories that transformed us into the people we are today.

      While I have not yet been published, my life has been full of adventures and education. I graduated from the University of Northern Iowa with a degree in Biology. I have been a middle school science teacher for 7 years and decided to pursue my passion of writing which my parents scoffed at when I was picking majors for my bachelor degree.