bout holl
What you can expect to find here
I hope you will find encouragement and hope here, with a side of humor, because honestly, it’s either laugh or cry and crying gives me a headache.
You can expect some real talk for real life. Life is not always a bed of roses, but I believe there is always reason for hope and always a way to find joy. (Even when it’s hard.)
A little bit about me
It’s always a struggle to know what to put here. My academic résumé? The number of kids I have? My political involvement? International humanitarian work? My favorite color?
How about we start with this:
Sister, I see you. I see you in the trenches when you are bleary-eyed from sleep deprivation from your baby who won’t sleep.
I see you when your toddler throws himself on the ground in floods of tears because you won’t let him eat a worm. I see you when your daughter with disabilities is hurt because of someone else’s neglect. I see when when you juggle work and family and feel like none of it is working as well as you’d like.
I see you when you struggle with imposter syndrome and feeling overwhelmed but also feeling the pull of a calling deep within you to make a difference in this world. I see you when your world crumbles because of others’ betrayal.
I see you in your grief, your joys, your sorrows and your faith. I see you because I am you. I hope we can share part of life’s journey together and have a few laughs (and maybe a few tears) along the way.
Some more details
The personal side
First of all, I have 25 kids. Now, I know what you are asking. Yes, they’re all ours. No, I did not birth them all. My husband and I adopted 20 from 8 different countries. I gave birth to 4 and we are permanent legal guardians to one of our granddaughters.
At out peak, we had 20 at home at one time. Now that we’re down to just 1 in school, it feels like we are empty nesters. And since everyone always asks how we feed them all – we used big pots, cooked from scratch and octupled our recipes. Now, the struggle is how to downsize our recipes….
I am also the mama to children (now adults) with disabilities of all varieties and sadly, have experienced the drop-you-to-your-knees grief of having children die.
I love being involved in humanitarian work, and even though it can be heart-wrenching at times, it can also be tremendously rewarding. My first international humanitarian trip was to Kenya in 2006. I have continued working internationally and since 2016, my work has been focused on refugees.
I love to read and go through around 100 books a year (mostly on Audible, double speed), I love the color pink, peonies, tulips and daffodils. I love brave women of all ages. My favorite movies are the three in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. And, I LOVE being a grandma to eight awesome grandkids!
I’m outspoken and tender-hearted, with a strong streak of Mama Bear that comes out when people I love are being marginalized, mistreated, dismissed, threatened or otherwise looked down upon.
Having ADD is my super power – and sometimes my Kryptonite. I often take on more than I can handle, and then figure out a way to do it anyway. My life mantra is this quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson: “That which we persist in doing becomes easier to do, not that the nature of the thing has changed but that our power to do has increased.”
The professional and academic side
I’m an extrovert (or maybe an omnivert – quiet time is also nice!). I love being with people. I have multiple interests and have done a lot of different things over the years, all while being the mom to a large family.
I love to speak, teach, train and workshop solutions with others. I also love to write and am the editor of a newsletter that goes out every weekday morning: Utah Policy. I also write occasionally for the Deseret News and the Church News. I was a columnist for the Salt Lake Tribune from January 2017 to December 2020. Prior to that, I wrote an award-winning political blog, “Holly on the Hill.” Clever, right?
I’ve done some political things too: I’ve been a member of the Utah House of Representatives and I’ve worked on multiple political campaigns. I am on the board of Utah Women Run, a nonpartisan organization focused on helping women run for political office – and win.
My first degree was as Registered Nurse. I also became a childbirth educator, a doula and a midwife. After a long break from formal schooling, I enrolled at Utah Valley University where I earned a Bachelor’s of Science in Communication, with an emphasis in Public Relations in 2016 and have now spent many years working in communication.
After completely my undergraduate degree, I continued with my formal education and went straight into a Master’s degree program in Professional Communication at Southern Utah University. Two years later, I graduated, after completing a capstone project where I created and then implemented a strategic communications plan for a small nonprofit agency.
In the fall of 2018, I began a PhD program in Political Science at the University of Utah. I majored in Public Administration, specifically Nonprofit Management and minored in International Relations. I graduated in 2022. My research interests are emotional labor, burnout, deep self-care, grassroots international nongovernmental organization and volunteers. Now that the PhD is done, I find myself very interested in learning more about conflict resolution and peace-building.