When Robin Schepper’s second baby was little, she felt like all she was doing was altering diapers and talking in child discuss.
“I wanted some mental stimulation,” she mentioned.
That led her to a artistic writing course the place she wrote a number of brief tales about her life — as she put it, her “origin story.” When Schepper shared these tales with pals, they repeatedly inspired her to develop on them in a e-book.
Throughout the stay-at-home days early on within the pandemic, Schepper bought round to stringing these tales collectively right into a memoir, which is slated for launch on April 18.
Schepper’s e-book, “Finding My Way: A Memoir of Family, Identity and Political Ambition” chronicles her lifelong seek for a dad she didn’t know and every thing that occurred alongside the way in which, together with her work on presidential campaigns, serving to plan a number of Olympic Video games and a job within the White Home.
Within the e-book, Schepper additionally hopes to indicate that everybody has obstacles to beat, even when these obstacles aren’t instantly obvious.
“Individuals I meet now, they know my historical past of working for the White Home, and so they take a look at me, blonde, blue eyed, like ‘Oh, you’ve most likely had a charmed life,’” Schepper mentioned. “My impetus (for the e-book) was that all of us have trauma in a roundabout way or one other, and the extra that we share with one another and help one another, I imagine that we will have a extra fulfilling life.”
Schepper was born to a single, Pan-Am stewardess mom within the Nineteen Sixties in New York Metropolis. She didn’t be taught English till kindergarten, grew to become emancipated at 15, labored as a nanny to pay her dwelling bills and earned a scholarship to a prestigious ladies college that had solely began accepting Catholics like her after John F. Kennedy was elected president.
She labored as an advance organizer for the presidential campaigns of Dick Gephardt in 1988 and Invoice Clinton in 1992, finally serving because the Washington State Chair for Clinton’s 1996 marketing campaign.
On the flip of the century, Schepper moved away from politics for a time, finally serving to to plan a number of Olympic Video games, beginning with an internship-like function in Sydney. Forward of the 2004 Summer time Olympic Video games in Athens, Schepper would journey backwards and forwards each two weeks between Greece and the place she was dwelling in Washington, D.C.
When the torch went out on these video games, Schepper mentioned, she bought actually concerned in her adopted youngsters’s college and spent loads of time volunteering. That finally led her to use to steer Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Transfer” initiative, which got here with a desk within the East Wing of the White Home.
After a 12 months in that function, Schepper continued to work within the coverage realm round meals and vitamin, which introduced her to army bases the place Fifties-era recipes of liver and onions have been nonetheless staples.
When funding for that dried up, she shifted her focus to native work within the Yampa Valley, which had grow to be her residence. When the pandemic began, she was enlisted to assist with communications for Routt County, considering it could solely be non permanent.
“Two years later,” Schepper mentioned with a chuckle.
The e-book consists of facets of her life that Schepper mentioned have been onerous to put in writing about, like being sexually harassed and assaulted as she labored her manner up within the male-dominated political scene of the Nineteen Eighties and Nineteen Nineties. Schepper mentioned she hopes girls, particularly younger girls, learn the e-book.
On the coronary heart of it’s the seek for her organic father and unraveling the half-truths that she grew up listening to about who she was.
“I used to be on the lookout for transparency in my household, as a result of no one would inform me the reality about who my dad was,” Schepper mentioned. “I’ve tried to do the identical factor in politics. … I believe that the reality and offering info and training to voters is simply as necessary as figuring out who your loved ones is.”
“I needed to make an affect, as a result of I used to be informed as a child that I didn’t matter. … I used to be a bastard baby,” Schepper continued. “I needed to show all people unsuitable.”
Schepper’s e-book is at present out there for presale forward of its April launch. Off the Crushed Path Bookstore and Steamboat Sotheby’s is internet hosting a e-book signing occasion with Schepper after the e-book’s launch on Could 11.
To succeed in Dylan Anderson, name 970-871-4247 or electronic mail danderson@SteamboatPilot.com.