Achievement

A long time ago, a shy little girl lived deep in the north woods of Minnesota. We'll call her Susannah.

In Kindergarten, when she was 5 years old, Susannah met another shy little girl. We'll call her Chicken Mama.

Susannah and Chicken Mama were inseparable. They went to school in the same log school house together when they were very small, and they played together all the time.

In high school, Susannah and her family moved to town, and she was able to participate in a lot more activities and make a lot more friends. This made Susannah happy!

Susannah was very, very smart - so smart, in fact, that she studied abroad in Italy for her senior year of high school. She thought she might study Linguistics and work for the UN. After Italy, travels took her to live in Germany and many other exciting places. She even lived and worked on a remote base in frozen, barren Antarctica for three years! Eventually, Susannah settled in Colorado where she became a Certified Massage Therapist and ran her own business for 10 years. It was during this time that she studied for and became an EMT and ambulance driver.

Susannah always returned to the north woods of Minnesota where Chicken Mama now lived. She bought land there. Then, in 2006, she married her soul-mate. We'll call him Peter. Susannah and Peter began designing the cabin they would build on their land in northern Minnesota.

A growing interest in medicine prompted the now determined, strong woman to go back to school to become a Physician's Assistant. The coursework and schedule were grueling, and she had to live away from her husband the whole time.

Hard work and pure grit prevailed, though, and - this past Friday, May 11th . . . with a tremendous job at one of the country's top bone marrow transplant clinics awaiting her . . . the shy little girl graduated with a license to practice medicine!

To quote Virginia Slims and say, "You've come a long way, Baby" would almost be an understatement. I am SO proud of you!

Love, "Chicken Mama"