We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Nancy Bordine a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Nancy, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?

My mission is to increase awareness of the humanity of each person around us to promote empathy in children. In my roles of foster parent, exchange student host, and psychiatric nurse, I’ve witnessed the challenges of overcoming barriers of marginalization firsthand. Being a foster parent opened my eyes to the world of childhood outliers, the kids that don’t fit in because of the differences in their home life. As a psych nurse, I saw the challenges many of those children experience in adulthood. As parent to children of color, I’ve experienced the heartaches of racism. My experiences brought the world’s need for more empathy into my heart and soul.
As an educator, I know that engaging teaching can effect change. I seek to create children’s books that help children see the humanity in those around them. I focus on children because they are still developing their framework for thinking, and I’ve been an historical re-enactor for 4th graders for more than a dozen years. My first book was a picture book that uses inspirations for traditional quilts as a springboard for learning activities that foster empathy, diversity, and inclusion. I wrote about quilts because of the similarities between the different pieces of fabric coming together to make a beautiful whole, and different people coming together to form a productive community, I strive to show how we enrich our work/school/social communities when we engage diversity and include others.
Perhaps some of what drives me to write about empathy is atonement for times when I have been less than empathetic . . .

Nancy, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I’ve always been a voracious reader. As I kid, I hid books under my bed so that my Mom didn’t know I was reading when she wanted me to be napping. I’ve loved the way books took me into different worlds, expanding my horizons. I met my childhood heroes through books; Helen Keller overcoming blindness and deafness to share her wisdom with the world, Amelia Earhart overcoming the limits of sexism, and Harriet Tubman overcoming not just racism, but bringing others to freedom. I feel like I honor my heroes when I write books to encourage children in overcoming barriers of injustice, when my books encourage children to look for the value of marginalized people, and when my books encourage older children to examine history for lessons in humanity. My next book is historical fiction for middle schoolers; about a found diary that takes a lonely girl back into the 1920’s world of another lonely girl, and their dilemmas of peer pressure and overcoming fear. My following book is also historical fiction, examining the culture clash between 1880’s Indigenous people and the Federal Boarding School system when a year in the life of an Anishinaabe girl studying to become a medicine woman, and a year in the life of a Boston spinster schoolteacher cross paths in a boarding school classroom.

Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?

My writing shifted from articles in periodicals and newsletters to getting books published when I attended an online writers’ conference in the first year of the pandemic. An advertisement for a women’s writing conference appeared on my social media that caught my attention. During that 5-day conference I met so many inspiring women in chat sessions. A few of us seemed to connect well in several sessions throughout the week. In our last session together we decided that we wanted to maintain our connections as an ongoing thing. We’ve been meeting online multiple times a month in the years since then; sharing insights, questions, inspirations, and feedback to help each other grow as writers. Several of our founding members have been published since we began supporting each other. I can’t recommend anything more strongly to an aspiring writer than to ‘seek out and find your tribe (a group of like-minded people)’, for they will become your biggest support and guidance. I found my sisterhood of writers online. Writing does not need to be a solo venture.

We’d love to hear the story of how you turned a side-hustle into a something much bigger.

Writing has become my primary focus in retirement, you know that time in our lives when one feels the need to pass on lessons we’ve learned. Though nursing was my career, I’ve always been moved by the power of words. My first published article was in a local magazine about how our neighbors bonded through sharing a compost bin. A friend at church encouraged me to write a piece for our newsletter. I joined a writers’ group I saw posted on our library’s bulletin board. A friend from that group connected me with a regional journal, which resulted in an ongoing column. My neighbor, a publisher, told me that the secret to getting published was ‘Submit, submit, submit!’, so I did just that. My submission about an inspiring patient got published in a national journal. That opened my mind to other inspirations around me. While staying at an historic inn run by some friends of ours, we poked around in the old outbuildings surrounding the inn. Exploring the inn’s old dining hall got me wondering about what it was like to work there ‘back in the day’. That evening our friends showed us 1920’s photos of well-coifed guests in their finery lined up to enter the enter the dining hall. That was all I needed to get me writing about a girl working in the dining hall in the 1920’s and the culture clash between the ‘have not’ staff and the ‘have’ guests. I worked in some history with hairstyles, dances, fashion trends, and current events, as well as some local Native American wisdom, and a bit of a mystery about some hidden gems to create a middle-school historical fiction novel. My research on local ancient wisdom for that first novel lead to me developing a deep appreciation for our indigenous culture; so much so that I began writing my next novel with a deeper dive into native culture and the culture clash they faced.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.nancybordine.com
• Instagram: @nancybordine
• Facebook: Nancy Bordine@missnancywrites
• Linkedin: Nancy Bordiine

Image Credits
Headshot credit to Aubrey Parker Photography Explanation of other photos: I love to share my love of books at Little Free Libraries when we travel Me as ‘the Quilt Lady’ at a living history festiival My husband and I with our international ‘son and daughter-in-law’ Me with kids at a book signing event Me doing learning activity with kids a library event Me with replica of Underground Railroad barn quilt Me with one of my ‘writing sisters’ in her classroom