Mermaid & Pirate, Writer & Ocean Environmentalist

At age 57 I am setting sail for new horizons to explore the life I've always dreamed of. To accomplish goals that were always put on the back burner. To do my bucket list and tell my stories for the benefit of those less experienced than myself, and for Mother Ocean.

I am leaving the past in the past, as well as everything I ever earned and acquired in this life, even though it was not by my design. After 33 years of marriage, I am now officially divorced and I will never give allegiance or love to anyone who is not an honorable person. That is my pledge. I will also not seek riches or fame and will always write under an alias. Anything I acquire in this life will be for good for others and the earth, and for my love of God.

I  do not have any family. I am in great health and spirits as I have been liberated and set free after three decades of manipulation, control, and domestic violence at the hands of a man who can never be saved. The past 33 yrs I have run my own businesses  and was very successful. We had millions in assets, and I have zero now. 

I am a marine scientist and spent 16 years in the FL Keys operating a commercial dive boat business. I collected and shipped salt water tropical marine life to every zoo and public aquarium in the world. If you've ever been to one anywhere, you have undoubtedly seen descendants of marine life I once put there. I earned my degree in marine sciences while I was in the USMM working aboard crude oil super tankers for 4 years. I also served in the Navy Military SeaLift Command during the Persian gulf war running in jet fuel convertly. I have over 10,000 open water dives under my belt and extensive knowledge and training on board ships, sailboats, motorboats, aquatic marine life, and marine engineering.

I sold my home and business in the FL Keys in 1999 for my husband who was having difficulty diving past 10,000 dives. He was an alcoholic and would never give up drinking beer despite my constant disapproval.

We moved to the NC mountains and I learned the trade of home building, renovations, and interior design and started a new business in that field that he worked in as well. I ran the business solely, and he performed tasks on some job sites. I was independent and worked on my own sites on very large upscale homes. He stole all the assets of the entire construction business during the divorce.

While running the construction business, I also became and expert in the field of antique and designer vintage jewelry. My 45 yr collection of jewelry that was mostly inherited, I sold online from an ecommerce website under my own domain name. He stole all of that too.

Essentially he left me without income, took all the money, and all the vehicles and no one has been able to force him to give anything back in almost 2 years now.

I built a home in NC with my x that recently appraised for $ 780,000. I can build a house from the ground up and do custom wood work and tile work as well.  I've never had any loans, liens, debts, or mortgages and managed our finances perfectly our entire marriage. He forced me to sign off the deed by threatening my life. I tried to fight what I signed for a year, but the judge says I did it willingly and I was never threatened.

I am also a tropical plant horticulturist, was an exotic bird breeder, and a writer. Ive also dabbled in the field of unique nautical crafts for the tourist trade in the FL Keys and was very successful at that as well.

I have always been full of love and honesty and full of life and positivity. Ive always had my eyes on the stars and the wind beneath my wings. Ive accomplished many very unique goals in my life that few women my age dared to try, because of the way I was raised by my mohter and father, who was a USM Korean war vet.

But, then came the opioid epidemic we now live in. I was unaware that my x was on these illegal drugs. I always thought he was just a mean drunk and never knew he was a narcissist psychopath until he got on these drugs behind my back.  He became extremely violent and wanted to divorce me. We had the property for sale for 3 yrs but he would not lower his exaggerated price.

In order to steal everything and get rid of me, he devised a very diabolical criminal plot with a woman of his own kind, an affair he was having, in order to make me run in fear of my life.

The two of them stole everything: over 2 million in assets including everything personal and inherited to me and all my intellectual property and even my identity. No cops, no court, no attorneys or judges can do anything because its civil, and he has not been held accountable because hes a pathological liar and uses tricks to attack and blame me for what he is doing. There is no asset distribution when everything I ever owned is just gone. Yes I can sue him – but I must move on to other horizons and forget the past. Material possessions are things I do not seek anymore.

I fought hard for a long time to the tune of $ 60,000 on my credit cards for attorneys. I destroyed my credit to fight him. My request for financial help here on Go Fund Me does not include that because I just cant pay it right now.

I had sole custody of my property and a domestic violence protection order for a year and half. I lived in a very isolated location on top of a mountain and had to struggle to survive. Some people told me to pack and run but Ive always been a fighter for what is right.

But in the end, he set out to kill me and made it very clear to me that if I didn’t give him everything, he was going to make it happen. He was breaking in and stealing more all the time, disabling the security cameras somehow. He got in and stole my father’s military funeral flags and my dads guns. He stole my cat, my bird, my truck, my new motorcycle, my truck, my cell phone, my computer, and all my post separation financial records. They hacked me online in every aspect possible and stole all the money and used my identity to commit bank fraud. He took everything personal and inherited to me. He set out to do egregious emotional, financial, and mental harm at the direction of his psycho witch on drugs too. And no one, no one, has been able to stop them. He has moved this woman into my house and all is lost for me now. The judge gave him the house becuase I could not prove in court that he threatened me.

The night he slashed my tires, he got into the house while I was sleeping and stole the tv remote sitting right next to me. I packed my clothes and whatever else I could get out with, and left in a hurry. They are still making me appear in court with him later next month for whatever bs these damn attorneys want to keep fighting about, but I moved 3 hrs away and I’m in hiding. I suffer severe ptsd attacks for days before I have to go to court, and in court, I cannot speak at all. Im totally terrified of him and I just want it over and don’t care how ! No one at all has helped me in any way during this whole ordeal except a few friends the best they could, but not with any money. No one wants to get involved because everyone is scared of him.

For the first time in 33 years, he does not know where I am and Im hoping he will be happy with all that he stole and leave me alone. He is on the highway to hell on these horrible drugs. He will not take me down with him, with his drinking and drugs, which I have never done. It is so sad to see someone you loved so much be destroyed, all by their own actions.

He stole all my written works, but I can write them again.

I want to write and get published; I want to publish compilations of short stories about my life and my experiences as I literally lived under water for a full 16 years. I also traveled the world on super tankers in the early 1980s when there were no women in the navy at sea at that time. I also have a gift for telling stories to children about what all the creatures in the sea are really like as I know their personalities very well.

I am a marine life conservationist and have worked hard my whole life to provide data and research to implement laws and protections. All of that was stolen too.

I run a facebook group called Mother Ocean where I track everything that is going on in the oceans worldwide. Ive taught hundreds of people to scuba dive and taught hundreds about marine life and their habitats, traits, and importance in the marine ecosystem. I have trained dolphins and bred tropical fish and invertebrates in captivity.

My home in the FL Keys was on the lagoon where Flipper lived and I have met and talked with Ric O”Barry about his experiences with Mary, or Flipper. In 1966, I was crazy about Flipper and my parents drove me from Maryland all the way to Miami to see Flipper at Miami Seaquarium. She was the first dolphin ever to be captured and trained in captivity. Ric and I have made it our life mission to remove all cetaceans from captivity and to protect those in the wild from harm. I am also a big supporter of my friend Paul Watson, the Sea Shepard. I would volunteer to work on his ships as I have all the skill sets, but I feel I am too old to be put in the dangerous circumstances they encounter.

I believe that the future of the oceans resides in the education of young people, children and young adults all over the world. The internet and social media has made this possible. The facts and knowledge I have about the levels of extinction that are occurring need immediate close examination and solutions. Without the oceans, all life on the planet will die. I believe we can save it, but time is running out.

 I would like to pursue a career in ecotourism education and writing and the best place to do that, is back where I belong in the FL Keys, or anywhere where the reefs and marine life are in grave danger. I lived out of a duffel bag for 4 years at sea and I want to go back to that life style, to be free of worldly possessions.

With all my worldly possessions stolen, I told God I gave them all to him and asked him to help me pursue a life of real meaning. God has set me free to harness the wind beneath my wings.

My life and travels will always be something you can keep in touch with – as I will write as a traveling journalist and novelist, publish online and in print. I will show you proof of what how helping me can help so many others, and help save Mother Ocean.

Ive been told by many I have the worst divorce anyone has ever heard of. It's what happens to people who are given too much love, too much trust, when they were abused as a child and are addicts and will never change. His greed and lies and hate can never be changed. His hatred for me is merely a reflection of his own heart and soul, not mine.

But in the course of this divorce, he tried to take my soul and it really hurt like hell because I always loved him. He had me arrested and jailed for 6 weeks on false charges. He repeatedly continued to file false charges from other states so he never had to get on the stand to be accountable for anything. I was arrested in civil court 6 times while he got a continuance.

He caused such horrible dismay to my dying mother that she wrote a suicide note to him and disconnected her oxygen. She could not bare to be without me in her final days. I had been caring for her for years and he mademe disappear and she had no money as I handled everything after her stroke.

As my mother said in her note to him, “I suppose you can carry on without me, but let this be on your conscience on my tombstone.”

That’s my mom ! Always going to have the last word! My mother was a very strong person and a relatively well known photographer and painter. Very creative and very artistic and loved nature so much. It was amazing to hear her talk about the flowers and birds and the colors in the sky. She can never die, because I am her !

They day I left the cemetery, from behind me she sat up in her grave, shook her finger at me and yelled, “ Always remember what I taught you! Never let anyone’s actions change who you are ! Always be the bigger better person!”

 At that moment, the end of October, as autumn was yielding to the icy frost covered grass, out of no where a white butterfly landed on my right shoulder, then flew out of sight. I did not turn around. I said, “ Yes mom. I hear you. I'll do my best. I love you.” I then got in her old car filled with all the paintings of hers I could stuff inside, and I drove 10 hrs south to try and get through the rest of my assassination style divorce. That was over a year ago today, and its still not over.

Yes, I suffer from ptsd attacks and depression at times – but Im so much stronger because my heart can never be turned into hate. Never. I always wanted the best for him and I still do. But I will never allow him to find me ever again.

My wings are no longer clipped. They are fully grown and I am ready to fly to parts unknown. Hope is, the thing with feathers that perches in the soul….

If anyone would like samples of my short stories, Im beginning my rewrites now. I lost about 100 manuscripts – but he cannot steal the experiences and thoughts in my head. All of my stories are about my real life and my style is somewhat like  Hemingway. I can make you feel, see, taste, hear, and envision places and people and things as if you were there, scene and character driven.

I have spent many days in Hemingway’s yard playing with the six toed cats and have emulated his life. Im not the writer he was, but Ive always lived my life with the same spirit and adventure. My ideal place to write would be his old home town in Cuba. I love Cuba and Ive been there several times when I was in the USMM.  From Key West, I can now get there and perhaps dig up stories from older people who knew him. Tales of Hemingway from Cuba…wouldn’t that be something to write !

I only need money to pay my living expenses, bills for an apartment for now and what little I have in storage, and expenses for my cell phone and to get published. I need money to get to where Im going – for modest accommodations. I need new scuba gear as that was stolen too.

I am a miser and know how to stretch a dollar. I promised my attorney I would pay what is left that I owe him. He did his best. Really he did. But no one, and I mean no one, has ever run across the evil narcissist psychopath my x became on these opioids. Satan was destine to take him, as he was born on Friday the 13th….

God grant me the serentity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. My grandmother made a huge needlepoint picture of this excerpt from the bible that hung on my wall since the day I was born. It may be gone from me now, but it is always in my heart.


My pen name is Vida Bella, which means My Beautiful Life.

My publishing company will be called 42 Bridges Publishing LLC.

* This photo is the companion needlepoint my grandmother made that hung in my mothers house since the early 1970s.  I gave it to my cousin.

My mom in her art studio on the Eastern Shore of Maryland


Some of my moms watercolor paintings....