It is our honor to introduce you to the talented 2022 cast of Listen To Your Mother Boulder 2022! We can’t wait for you to experience this year’s show in person on May 7th! With poignant tributes to mothers (and mothers-in-law!), hilarious motherhood stories, remembering your “pre-mom” self, tales of parenting during challenging times, and LTYM’s trademark raw honesty, you do not want to miss these stories! We are even more excited that you get to enjoy them at the incomparable Boulder Theater, a gorgeous and memorable venue complete with refreshments! Tickets are on sale here. And now, meet the women bringing you this year’s stories!
Nanette Bezjak
Nanette Bezjak is a single, adoptive mother to four special needs children. She enjoys going on daily adventures with her family and excels at cooking dinners that her family refuses to eat. Sitting in the school drop-off lane is the place where she does her best writing. Nanette works as a Single Moms Case Manager/Coordinator for The Refuge finding resources for single mothers and running a monthly support group. She also loves to volunteer for A Precious Child. Nanette enjoys in-depth conversations with her 4-year-old nephew about butt cheeks and farts and dreams of one day speaking the same language as her children.
Chris Chandler
Chris lives in Boulder, with her husband, two sons, a bonus daughter, two cats and three dogs. She loves books and words and still can’t believe there’s a place called a library that gives her free books. Born into a southern family rich with stories, she’s spent her life asking to be told the same yarns again and again. Chris started writing journals as a child, then turned to personal essay and memoir to tell her own stories and preserve the family tales she loves. She believes sharing our stories is healing for ourselves and the world, a practice that brings us together and allows us to feel less strange and alone. Her work has been published on Scary Mommy, she was a LTYM 2020 cast member and she’s working on a collection of stories about her crazy, loving southern family.
Amy Ferrell
Amy Ferrell is a mother of two sweet girls and has a beautiful marriage with her husband Jack. She’s originally from Iowa, but arrived in Colorado in 1998 via a one-way Amtrak train. Since then, she has been living in Golden and enjoys attending Red Rocks concerts with friends and going on family camping trips. She received a Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing from Metropolitan State University, and then worked with The Integer Group on marketing efforts for several national brands. She has been a SAHM since 2013, pouring all that she is into her family and her home. Beyond Mom duties, Amy tends to always have a side-hustle or two, and most recently has been turning her thrifting hobby into a reselling business. She has a talent for coming up with fun crafting ideas for our elementary school holiday parties, enjoys gardening, tending to her indoor plants, sewing, crocheting, and snuggling her dog, Sunny-Bear.
Stacey Hutson
Stacey is a mother to two could-not-be-more-different daughters, ages 2 and 4. By now, she thought she’d be totally immersed in motherhood, happily sitting on the floor, “doing voices,” trying desperately to hold on to every precious moment. But instead, she found herself on that same floor reminiscing about the days when she was a writer (published in Paleo Magazine, Hub Spot, New You Magazine, and TheList.com), an ad girl (working on brands like Revlon, Green Toys, Enjoy Life, and Eco Tools), and health nut badass (with a mildly successful food blog and stint as a personal chef). Stacey finally got tired of daydreaming about the woman she wanted to be and did something about it by creating the Mother Plus Podcast. Next on the list for her is to learn hip hop dancing and revisit one of her favorite places in the world – the Karaoke stage.
Lisa Lane
Lisa Lane is an overeducated goofball who finds the funny in the balancing act of parenting teenagers, becoming single at age 50, and navigating the chin hairs and wrinkles on her very own face. She is a regular host, feature, and mother figure in the Denver comedy scene and has most recently performed with Steve Rannazzisi, Gina Brillon, Steve Gillespie, and the MLB All-Star Game 5K. Lisa is the author of Beyond Mama Bear: How to Survive the Balancing Act of Parenting Teenagers and Teenagers Suck: A Memory Book for Parents During the Awkward and Awful Years, as well as an announcer and voiceover actor.
Missy Lopez
Missy Lopez currently resides in Fort Collins with her partner and her 10 year old son and 7 year old daughter. She graduated from Colorado State University in 2009 with a degree in Music – Piano Performance – and Social Work. Her music life includes being a piano teacher as well as the keyboardist in a band called Fancy Bits that includes two other rad women. Missy is passionate about social healing and transformative justice work in her communities. She desires to create liberatory spaces that provide access to marginalized communities. She has facilitated and participated in numerous women’s circles and desires to bring circle work to other populations as well. She loves connecting with Pachamama and is deeply grateful for the bond of love with her truest friends. Things she could do everyday without fail would be reading, writing, sitting in front of her fire, cuddling with her cats and family and always finding the way of ease along with some bursts of adventure.
Melissa Holland Mansika
Melissa Holland Mansika is the founder of “Inner Wisdom Parenting.” She supports parents in addressing their children’s challenging behaviors with online courses, workshops, coaching and consulting in the essential areas of emotional and self-regulation, self-compassion and mindfulness. She is an experienced coach and teacher, previously in the areas of positive psychology, career and life transitions. She lives with her boys in Boulder: the big one (husband), the little one (eight-year old) and the fuzzy one (Rocket, the Cat). When she’s not creating courses or supporting parents, she’s reading, learning, laughing with her twin sister and friends, drinking coffee, feigning interest in Minecraft and Star Wars, reading about trail running (not actually running – yet) and hanging out with her favorite boys. Her motto to live by – lately – has been “hold it lightly.” She’s still learning how.
Ellen Nordberg
Ellen Nordberg’s stories have appeared in The L.A. Times, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, The Denver Post, The Huffington Post, Yahoo, Parade, and 5280. She has been a featured storyteller in the “Truth Be Told” Story Slam. “Stories on Stage” has performed her stories, and she holds a Colorado Author’s League Award “Best Essay” award.
Libbi Peterson
Libbi Peterson is a writer and educator. She has been published in The Denver Post as a member of the Colorado Voices Panel and in issues of the literary magazine, Motherscope. She currently serves as the Middle School Director at Mackintosh Academy in Boulder. Previously, she worked as a middle school assistant principal at a charter school, as a secondary language arts teacher at various public schools, and as a youth instructor for the Boulder Writing Studio. Libbi double majored in German and Communication at Nebraska Wesleyan University, and she has earned her M.A. in Education along with a principal licensure. Outside of school and writing, Libbi enjoys spending time with her husband, Ben and two daughters, Linnea and Willa. Together they love to ride bikes, hike, read, and garden.
Jessica Shah
As Jessica walks two cultures daily as a writer, poet and a parent, her immigrant experience guide and inspire her writing which includes poetry, essay and memoir. Jessica moved to the Boulder area from India over thirty years ago. A mother of two daughters and on the threshold of being an empty-nester, Jessica’s poetry draws from the deep well of motherhood. She has published a book of poetry, Coming Home, recently co-produced her eighty-six year mother’s memoir of short essays in her native language and is working on her next collection of poetry. A former restaurant owner and an Indian vegetarian cooking teacher, Jessica is passionate about social justice and food equity issues. She loves fitness, the outdoors and savors the fragrance of spring hyacinths in her front yard in her rocky mountain home as well as orange gulmohurs in Mumbai.
Kim Wright
Kim Wright is an EMDR therapist in private practice with a focus on teaching people the superpower that is Mindful Self-Compassion. She also works as a Mental Health Advocate for BVSD where she gets to hang out with all the cool kids who get sent to the Principal’s office. Kim is the mother of three children who are all growing up way too fast. Kim is curious to write beyond her journal and start to make sense of her own crazy childhood. Just as her mother used to say that her spray-painted gold cowboy hat kept her head on straight, Kim keeps her head on by running on the trails around Boulder and has completed over 30 marathons. Kim has been married to her husband Eric for 26 years and can be found going to yoga with her daughter, taking a pottery class with her middle son, and dropping off or picking up her youngest son at the skatepark. Nothing makes her happier than feeding her children, both literally and figuratively.
Meet Your LTYM Boulder Producers
Stephanie Sprenger
Stephanie Sprenger is a writer, producer, music therapist, and mother of two daughters. Her work has been published in O Magazine, The Washington Post’s On Parenting, Brain, Child Magazine, Cosmopolitan.com, Mutha Magazine, Redbook.com, the Huffington Post, The Chicken Soup for the Soul series, and Scary Mommy, among other places, and she (infrequently) blogs about the imperfect reality of motherhood at Mommy, for Real. She is also co-editor of The HerStories Project, a writing and publishing community for women at midlife and co-hosts the Mother Plus Podcast. Stephanie lives for sunny weekends and Disney vacations, and in between those moments, she fuels herself with coffee, creating, singing, a good old-fashioned with her besties, and inside jokes and snuggles from her ten- and fifteen-year-old daughters.
Megan Vos
Megan Vos was a 2018 LTYM Boulder cast member, and joined the production team in 2019. When she’s not writing, Megan loves sunny hikes on the South Boulder trails, Harry Potter readathons with her seven and ten year-old daughters, and trying new recipes with her partner. She is currently editing her first middle grade novel and disproving her old story that she doesn’t write fiction. Megan is also the Community Coordinator for the Motherscope Writers Club, and has been substituting at her daughters’ elementary school this spring. Her writing has been published in Motherscope, Kindred, Motherwell, and Journal of Expressive Writing. Follow Megan on Instagram at @meganvoswrites and on her website.
Stay in touch here:
We can’t wait to see you on May 7th at the Boulder Theater! Tickets are on sale here.
Your 2022 LTYM Boulder Production Team,
Stephanie & Megan
