Writer • Author • Blogger • Wife • Mother • Friend • Connecter • Encourager • Wayfinder • Personal Note Writer • Virginian • Birder • Alto • Guitar Player • Christian/Episcopalian • Bank Board Chair • Community Activist • Cattleman’s Daughter • Amateur Radio Operator: W4EHC
Rooted in the land and the countryside
Born and raised on a cattle farm, I grew up connected to the land and the four seasons of the Virginia Piedmont region in Fauquier County. My undergraduate degree in Biology came from Randolph-Macon Woman’s College (now Randolph College) in Lynchburg, where I was nurtured as a woman and a community leader.
While getting my Master’s degree in Human Anatomy at Tulane School of Medicine in New Orleans, I met my husband, Dr. John Cottrell, Jr. While he finished his residency, I was Laboratory Supervisor at Gulf South Research for a team doing leprosy research. After John finished his specialty training in Internal Medicine, we moved back to Virginia for him to open his practice in Shenandoah County in the heart of the Shenandoah Valley.
Family, community, and career
John and I have a daughter and a son, now grown and off doing amazing things with families of their own, including two grandsons.
I served on the Board of Trustees of my college as well as on several other nonprofit boards. I was appointed to the Shenandoah County School Board and served for nine years. In 1991, I was the first woman appointed as a Director of First Bank/First National Corporation, and in 2016, I was honored to be elected as the bank’s first female Board Chair in its 109-year-old history.
I am passionate about my work with my church and with the Shenandoah Community Foundation and the Moore Educational Trust.
Professional writing life and passions—published book
A combination of entrepreneurial leanings and a desire to help defray college costs led me back to the workforce as a technical writer and later to open my own desktop publishing business, RiverwoodWriter, LLC, where I’ve done freelance and ghostwriting and editing for individual and small business clients.
I am also a personal note-writing ambassador and the “Great Pause” of COVID-19 gave me time to accomplish a long-cherished dream: I wrote a book, Heartspoken: How to Write Notes that Connect, Comfort, Encourage, and Inspire, and it was published in July 2022 by Koehler Books in Virginia Beach. I do civic and small business presentations, lead retreats and workshops, and blog about ways to strengthen the essential connections of our Heartspoken Life.
Here I am today, old enough to retire, but still feeling strongly called to use my writing to encourage others and help them discover the keys that unlock their heartspoken life. I’m living proof that you’re never too old to learn new things!
We are blessed to live at the edge of a pine woods on the north fork of the Shenandoah River. John and I love to walk, watch the birds, and travel to visit our children and grandchildren.
Testimonials
For professional testimonials, Click Here.
Personal mission statement
It is my goal to live each day in service to God by seeking to strengthen those essential connections – with God, with Self, with Others, and with Nature—that encourage, nurture, support, educate, and enlighten. I will strive to accomplish this through my personal and professional relationships, my writing, and my teaching. I pray for:
- Discernment to see the inner beauty in each person I meet.
- Guidance to spend my time meaningfully and purposefully.
- Humility to remember that it’s never about me.
- Judgment to know the difference between busy-ness and meaningful work.
- Compassion for others and for myself.
- Courage to venture beyond my comfort zone.
- Wisdom to know what to embrace and what to let go.
- Vision to accommodate both Dreams and Doubt with equanimity.