POTTSTOWN — Do you ever feel like other people have expectations for you that just don’t fit?
Growing up, Ajia Kirchgasser did.
“Everyone expected big things, but they were not what I wanted to do,” she explained.
“I wanted to be an elementary school teacher, but that didn’t work out. I’ve always been good at math, so I went into accounting and I was always doing what people expected of me,” she said.
Kirchgasser, 30, spent a lot of time in Pottstown, visiting her grandparents Patricia Gehris and Leon Gibbs. “They lived in Pottstown their entire lives, went through the Pottstown schools and we were here all the time.”
The Sinking Spring resident and Conrad Weiser High School graduate may work as an accountant by day, but by night she is a children’s book author – well at least now she is.
“I’ve always had a creative spirit,” said Kirchgasser. “I was doing some crafting and really enjoyed it and I thought to myself, I really need to start looking into my creative side.”
She did not expect to start with writing, “but I started having these ideas and I would jot them down and in January of this year, I just sat down and said ‘I’m going to do this.’”
And she did “and I found what I think is the best version of myself.” And that’s what she found for Molly Mae the dairy cow too.
Kirchgasser’s first book, “Molly Mae’s Milshakes” “is loosely based on my life,” with the obvious caveat that Kirchgasser is not a cow. The book is illustrated by Sandra Attema-Welte.
Molly Mae “is a cow born on a dairy farm and her two sisters produce award-winning milk, but she can’t,” Kirchgasser explained. “But she has a best friend who keeps telling her ‘we just need to find something you’re good at.’”
As the title suggests, what they eventually found was that she knew how to make the best milkshakes, using the milk from the dairy where she grew up.”
“I feel like if I can just inspire one kid to keep looking, it will have been worth it,” Kirchgasser said.
She will have multiple opportunities to do that because she will be reading her book in second-grade classrooms in Barth, Rupert and Franklin elementary schools and in first grade classrooms and Lincoln Elementary School. And when she is done, each child will receive an autographed copy of her book.
That’s thanks to the sponsors: the Pottstown chapter of the NAACP, chapter President Johnny Corson who dedicated his sponsorship to the memory of his parents, Monroe and Jannie Brandt, along with Ian Matlack at Peoples Security Bank and Trust, and Ken Harrison from U.S. Axle.
“I’m really excited to do this, and to have published a book,” Kirchgasser said. “It feels like a whirlwind.”
Source: Berkshire mont