I like to introduce Teresa as “my first ex-husband’s second ex-wife” and watch people do the math in their heads. I also kept his second wife, Teresa, with whom he had four sons. I gave up on my husband, but I kept his mother. Karen and I have been friends for forty-one years. My mother-in-law Karen said she’d never seen anyone stretch a nickel so far. Ash and I had lived in places where you keep the lights on at night and push heavy objects up against the doors and then in a shelter where it didn’t snow inside. Sure enough, he left when she was six-weeks-old, disappearing into drugs and alcohol. I loved her father, but I was eighteen years old, and I knew how life worked. Each of these twenty-four accomplished authors shares authentic stories that consider the meaning of life affirming, sometimes life saving or gut wrenching, and fun realities of investing in each other: Think chicken soup with adult beverages.Ībout a year later, my daughter Ashley was born. She lives in Wisconsin and Arkansas with her husband and a spoiled dog.Friendships serve as a cornerstone to a rich life. Jenkins writes a quarterly book review column for the Sierra Club’s Muir View and maintains a personal website at and a writing site at She’s read her essays on Wisconsin and Alaska public radio and been a radio guest on dozens of shows. Every Natural Fact: Five Seasons of Open-Air Parenting Her work has appeared in multiple magazines, newspapers, and anthologies including Wisconsin Academy Review, Wisconsin Trails, Flint Hills Review, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Shepherds Express, Florida Review, Inkpot, Earth Island Journal, Grit, Generations, Rosebud, Big Apple Parent, MetroParent, Washington Families, Chicken Soup, Cup of Comfort books, Women on Writing, The Maternal is Political, and the summer 2010 release Wild with child. She is the recipient of a Mesa Refuge writing fellowship for environmental writing.

Every Natural fact is a winner of the Ellis / Henderson Outdoor Writing Award and the Readers Choice Award. Her nonfiction has also won first place in the Jade Ring Award for Essay Writing, Wisconsin Regional Writing Award in Essay, Memoir, and Travel Writing. Her environmental and nature writing has been honored by, The Florida Review Editors Award in Nonfiction, Literal Latte Essay Awards, Flint Hills Review Nonfiction Award, and the X.J. She teaches as a university adjunct and at writing retreats, conferences, and workshops.

Amy Lou Jenkins is the author of Every Natural Fact: Five Seasons of Open-Air Parenting Amy Lou holds a BSN in Nursing and Professional Communication and MFA in Literature and Creative Writing from Bennington College.

Every Natural Fact by Amy Lou Jenkins