One Spirit Project is proud to introduce . . .
| Shelly Strauss Rollison Email Shelly The Rainbow's End |
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Shelly grew up in a "normal" home. The oldest of seven children of still married Roman Catholic parents (yes, that was normal in those days), she graduated from high school in '77 and then from Marquette University in '81 with a degree in civil engineering only to realize she had no desire to be an engineer. But her days of attending a Catholic grade school and a Catholic university did accomplish something: it made her realize that Catholicism did not answer all the questions she had concerning her spirituality.Thus began (or continued, depending on how you look at it) a long journey inward to find the answers she was seeking. Her spirituality is evident in all she writes, whether it be a novel, an article for a newsletter or simply a posting on one of the online forums she visits regularly. Currently she maintains several homepages online that detail her spiritual beliefs. Her email folders are full of letters from people who have found comfort and understanding of themselves or someone they love in her online musings.
Being online has had other benefits too: she met her wife online in a chat room. Seven and a half months later, they were married (unfortunately not legally) in Denver, Colorado. Then, on October 30, 2003, they were LEGALLY married in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. She and her wife live in New Alexandria, PA, and share in the duties of raising her two children from a previous marriage. Self-employed as a drafter, she uses her spare time to manage several other projects, including an online newsletter, advisor in an online forum dealing with issues of non-heterosexuality, abuse, and spirituality, and of course, her writing.
Her other activities, past and present, include duties as a trained adult leader in her sons' Cub Scout pack until kicked out by the local BSA Council for being gay. She is a certified Braille transcriber who is attempting to transcribe the epic adventures of Bilbo Baggins, as told in JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy, with the written permission of the publisher. It is a project that will take many years. She is also a trained intake worker for a domestic violence shelter and a volunteer at her sons' school. She has also been involved in prisoner correspondence, writing at one point to more than 50 inmates in institutions all over the country.
