This memoir is about overcoming setbacks and finding hope. It’s about Jeffrey L. Baxter’s journey overcoming chronic depression and the resultant obesity that developed because of his inability to deal with two significant deaths. He hopes that readers will see that life is, indeed, a journey, and that hope can be found even when it seems least likely.

About the Author

Jeffrey L. Baxter is the oldest of five children, born when his mother had tuberculosis. His Dad had to quit architectural school to pay the bills and his mother couldn’t have contact with him because of the TB. So, Baxter was raised for the first four years of his life by his Grandmother Younkin, a retired school teacher. As he grew up, she would suggest poetry and other literature for him to read to discover the answers to the questions he was asking her. Then they would sit in her rocking chairs and figure out the answers together.

Baxter has taught for well over thirty years. He’s a fellow of the National Writing Project and very active with his local affiliate, the Greater Kansas City Writing Project. He’s presented hundreds of workshops in the Midwest and nationally.

After overcoming chronic depression in the nineties and losing more than two hundred pounds, he rediscovered his teaching career and his life. He is the 2014 Kansas Teacher of the Year. He’s also the 2015 Kansas Global Education Fellow, working with teachers globally. In 2015 he traveled to Peru to work with Peruvian children and educators.

Baxter believes that character matters more than test scores, and that teaching literature should be a meaningful conversation between teacher and students like Baxter’s conversations with his grandmother.