About

Hi. My name as given me by my mother is Clarike Clara Katrina de Groot. I took my late husbands name as Bowman and made my self Clarike Bowman. After he died and many years later I married Ed Jahn, making my name Clara Bowman-Jahn. Usually I shorten the Clara and am just Clar and keep my two last names.

The ‘ike’ after Clar is the diminutive of Clara in Dutch, which is the language of Holland where I was born. We emigrated from the Netherlands when I was seven, a long long time ago.

There was no ESL back then and when I arrived in America on Friday my mother thought all us kids should go to school on Monday. I didn’t even know how to ask where the bathroom was. And I was seven! I quickly learned English so I could get along with my classmates.

When my late husband died, I was a young widow at forty two with two sons. One was ten and the other was fourteen. We had a lot of readjusting to do. I was working as a neurosurgery nurse in a teaching hospital with an hour commute one way. After ten years there and several years in my second job in urgent care I started working closer to home in Home Health.I loved my job as a visiting nurse but had to leave it after back surgery.

All through this time of my late husbands illness and adjustment I kept journals. I’ve always hoped to make my journals a public writing where my life lessons could be helpful to others. Now that I’m blogging and taking writing classes I am getting ready to do just that.

While I love making my journals a public writing, I also enjoy writing children’s books in my spare time.

I belong to a writers group that meets every second and fourth Wednesday, Penn Writers, which is a like minded community of writers and I am also a member of SCBWI.

I have one published children’s picture book, Annie’s Special Day, about clocks and time. It is about a little girl who celebrates her birthday with an adventure every hour. It is out in both E Book and print from http://www.etreasurespublishing.com/ and out on Amazon and Kindle, as well. I’ve heard reports that it is out in Nook,  too, but for a whole lot more money. I had nothing to do with that. I hope you enjoy my blog and will leave comments, telling me a little about you.