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By following her passions, Heather Lee crafted an adventurous life. Now she’s in Winter Garden, looking for more. H E AT H ER AN N E LE E
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emember back when you were a kid? You would just do things. You never thought twice about belting Blondie’s “Call Me” from the stairs in your mom’s sequin shoes. Or that doing backflips on your parents’ bed might land you in the ER with nine stitches. You never asked yourself, “Is this a good idea?” or “What
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The Local
could go wrong?” All you needed to know was, “Is this gonna be fun?” And the answer was always yes. You didn’t debate the merits of kickball versus soccer in gym class. All that mattered was playing. (The bonus was seeing your name on top of the record board in the elementary school gym.) And you certainly didn’t care that your underwear would show
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when you practiced hip circles and cartwheels on the playground. You simply wrote books and played tag and asked silly questions and pretended to slay the monsters hiding in the closet. There was no bullshit. If you liked something, you just did it. If you didn’t, everyone in a 10-mile radius would know about it. That’s kind of how I’ve lived my entire life. Pas-
sionate curiosity, excitement, and stubbornness leading the way. Sometimes it paid dividends. Other times, not so much. Either way, all my reckless yeses curated an unimaginable life.
Pen and Ink Five-year-old Heather loved to make books. I would spend hours half-drawing, half-writing stories on mismatched sheets of stray
