My husband tells me I have to be serious whilst writing my biography. Strangers, he tells me, are going to be reading this thing - people who have no idea who I am and are not familiar with my kind of unique sense of humor. So I shall endeavor to keep a straight face while I tell the facts of my life. As I see them.

Karen Molenaar Terrell was raised in the Pacific Nortwest by her father, Dee Molenaar, a well-known mountaineer (author of *The Challenge of Rainier* and a member of the 1953 K2 Expedition, retold in the book *K2: The Savage Mountain*) and her mother, "Mozzy" Molenaar, a free-thinking and free-spirited Christian Scientist. Her parents raised Karen to be a really happy skeptic - her non-religious father taught her to question religious and political dogmas, and her Christian Scientist mother taught her to question everything she saw, heard, and felt with the material senses. Her parents maybe didn't share the same religious beliefs and non-beliefs, but they shared the same values, and they taught Karen to keep an open mind, to not be hasty to judge others, to appreciate the beauty of nature, and to look for the good in people.

Karen enjoys tromping around in the mountains (she's made it to the summits of Rainier, Baker, Adams, and Hood), photography, gardening, reading, singing (yes, she's one of those wedding singers - stop laughing) and writing. Karen is the author of *Are You Taking Me Home Now?: Adventures with Dad*, *The Brush of Angel Wings*, *Finding the Rainbows*, *A Poem Lives on My Windowsill*, *Blessings: Adventures of a Madcap Christian Scientist* and other books from the Madcap Christian Scientist series. Her stories have appeared in "Newsweek*, *The Christian Science Monitor*, and *Pack and Paddle Magazine*), and her photos have been featured in the April/May 2017 issues of *Mother Earth News*, and the spring 2014 edition of *The Bellingham Review*.

Karen lives with her husband and sons in the Pacific Northwest.