“When my mother died in July of 2010, all the furniture in my comfortable little house was rearranged,” she said.

Realizing that everything she held dear could be swept out from under her in an instant, she made immediate changes. She quit her job in academic administration and began an entrepreneurial experiment. It took a couple of partnerships and companies devoted to web design and marketing to help her realize that she was always meant to be a writer. 

When asked where she sees herself in the near future, Marisa’s response is, “Teaching online classes and building a greater audience for my writing, Even if the novels (a trilogy called Sovereign Reality) don’t get birthed for another 5 years, I am still nurturing the ideas,” she said. “Truth: I want to be Diana Gabaldon when I grow up.”

Marisa’s list of goals includes: putting one foot in front of the other; living in the moment and savoring her girls; deepening her spiritual practice; honing her writing voice and building her business so that she has enough breathing room to do all of the above. 

“Remembering my spiritual practice grounds all of that in what is really important.”

When we asked Marisa what advice she’d give to others looking to follow their passion to their personal life path/career, she took her time thinking about it. 

“If it seems too hard, it probably is.”

 “My former business partnerships were often painful and unprofitable. We were reinventing the wheel and being perfectionists. We did not look around to see what the market really needed because we were trapped in what we ‘should’ do.”