About

In a typical biography, you’d learn that author Carol Marleigh Kline was a television anchor/producer and talk show host and that she earned a B.A. at the University of Southern California and an M.A. at Columbia. You’d also find out she taught broadcast journalism at two universities, produced/coordinated programming for the Smithsonian Resident Associates, and became director of publications and a journal editor at the American Chiropractic Association. It might mention she’s listed in Who’s Who of American Women. All that is true. But it has nothing to do with why she wrote Streetwise Spirituality. Here’s that story.

Carol had no reason to suspect she would not spend her life as a university teacher of things Japanese. When that dream bombed, she grabbed hold of another.
This time, she would spend her life on television. That dream, too, bombed.
Meanwhile, several remarkably inappropriate relationship choices led her to believe that a cat was her best hope for long-term, dependable love. But that’s not all she wound up with.
Having moved 3,000 miles from Virginia to Oregon, Carol wondered why nothing in life was turning out anything like her rosy beginnings. She discovered a battered box while unpacking. It had traveled to Japan, and back and forth across America—always unopened. Carol decided to take one last, hard-eyed look at the contents before hauling it out to the dumpster. But what she found inside changed her life—utterly and completely.

That’s the core of the story behind the life I led before sitting down to write Streetwise Spirituality. A few details are missing, but that’s okay. You’ll find them in the book.
–Carol