In the year 2000, right after Y2K, (do you remember that historic moment when many feared that when the clocks struck midnight on January 1, 2000, computers could be using an incorrect date and thus fail to operate properly) Mary Jo Doig moved from her beloved rural Catskill Mountain community in Bovina Center, New York, to Virginia’s Central Shenandoah Valley. In a tiny cabin that began life as a one-car garage, on a wooded Blue Ridge mountainside, she started to write her stories, in part, about repressed memories that she retrieved in her fifth decade. Eventually she stitched those repressed memories and others, patchwork fashion, into the fabric of her memoir. She also became, in addition to her professional human services career, a life-writing enthusiast. Presently an editor, book reviewer, and facilitator of women’s writing workshops, she has long supported women writing their life stories
She has blogged for a number of years with Word Press. Presently her stories are located at maryjodoig.com/blog. Her most recent story, “I Can’t Breathe,” was published in Inside and Out: Women’s Truths, Women’s Stories. Her work has also appeared in the anthologies: Kitchen Table Stories , Real Women Write: Growing/Older, LaJoie magazine, and varied periodicals. She lives and writes in solitude near historic Charlottesville, VA, in her home by a huge window that frames the gorgeous Blue Ridge Mountains. She also enjoys quilting, knitting, cooking, gardening, hiking, and spending time with her family and friends. And, in particular, time with her three rescue pets, each of whom dream of being an only child.
Patchwork: A Memoir of Love and Loss is her first book.