About Sonia

Sonia Marsh

My name is Sonia Marsh, author of Freeways to Flip-Flops: A Family’s year of Gutsy Living on a Tropical Island, and the founder of the “My Gutsy Story” series.

I’m a mother, wife, author, blogger and unconventional thinker. I’m also a world traveler, with a special affinity for tropical islands.

I have a thirst for adventure and out-of-the-ordinary life experiences. I’m in my fifties, with kids who might get married soon. Yet I don’t feel rooted in one country or place. That could be disconcerting, but I choose to view it as a gift from my parents, who brought me up to be independent and who gave me the opportunity to live in different parts of the world.

My adventure started at the age of three months, when my Danish mom and English dad decided to raise me in Nigeria, a country in West Africa. There I grew up with a Great Dane to protect me from the occasional thief who broke into our family’s colonial house outside Lagos.

Sonia with her mom and Skjold, her Great Dane in Tarkwa Bay, Nigeria

When I was six, we moved to Paris, and three years later, my parents sent me alone on a plane from Paris to Los Angeles to visit my cousins. In those days planes refueled in Greenland and, thirty minutes after takeoff, I looked out the window and noticed smoke and flames from the jet engine closest to me. When the flight attendant asked me to fasten my seat belt, her face as white as milk, I thought it was part of the entertainment.

In 1983, I moved from Paris to California to start new life. I was twenty-five and knew I wanted to live in the U.S. and marry an American. At age 13, I was fascinated by NASA astronauts, and I fell in love with their rich, deep voices. I knew I would marry an American man with an astronaut voice. I met my husband, Duke, in a “gutsy” way: I responded to an ad in a magazine. And, yes, I fell in love with his voice first.

I’ve lived in Orange County, California since 1983, except for the year we uprooted our family and took our three sons to Belize, Central America. You can find out more on my Gutsy Book page. I wanted my three sons to experience life in another country; to see how other people live with less. I’m happy to say they turned into well-adjusted young men with a global outlook on life.