New Script

“I dreamed of creating a community, launching a blog and then a book, centered on finding grace in the everyday, in the midst of our homes.”

Life before the Leap

For more than a quarter of a century, Barbara has been a newspaper reporter, telling other people’s stories. Before that, she was a pediatric oncology nurse who aspired to someday open an inner-city clinic and take care of women and children.

But as the self-proclaimed “chair lady” describes so poignantly in the insightful meanderings on www.pullupachair.org: “A sad thing happened on my way to nursing school in Boston. My dad died. At his funeral the priest read a letter I had written to my Papa the Christmas right before he died. Someone who was there  —  a bigwig at the Chicago ad agency where my dad had spent nearly two decades  —  took me to lunch two weeks later and said, “Kid, you can write. Have you ever thought of journalism?” I walked home from that lunch, and here, twenty-six years later, I have a master’s in journalism from Northwestern, a quarter century at the Tribune, a husband and two kids, all thanks to that lunch.”

A writing star was born. Still today, Barbara loves her Tribune writing. And in the same way she once brought compassion to the bedsides of children and their families, Barbara nurtures her Tribune readers with her natural ability to get at what really matters in a story: the crucial capacity, the human heart.