I’m Shara Ernst — mother, eldest daughter, wife of thirty years, friend, writer, interviewer, cultural bridge-builder, and social impact advocate whose love language is food and thoughtful acts or gestures. Born (1962) and raised in small-town Nebraska, I moved to San Francisco in the ’80s, worked hard, played hard, fell in love, and spent the last three decades building a life in Germany. I’ve raised our children across the nuances of two languages, navigated cultural displacement, and learned that perspective shifts when you stand outside your own culture long enough.
A lifelong, voracious reader, my intellectual curiosity carried me to the Bay Area during the early, visionary years of Silicon Valley. I worked alongside people who believed technology could expand human potential, not replace it. That optimism shaped me. But I also watched as speed and scale began to eclipse intention, and ‘move fast and break things’ became doctrine. When I chose to leave that world to build a family, I took with me both the belief in technology’s power to connect and transform — and a wariness about what happens when we stop asking who it serves and what it costs. That (precise) tension informs everything I write about AI, algorithms, and the digital forces reshaping our lives today.
During Germany’s refugee crisis, I built close relationships with newly arrived families and unaccompanied teens, including a young woman whose solitary journey across borders left a permanent imprint on my understanding of courage. Through their stories of loss and rebuilding, I witnessed a kind of strength forged in suffering. Those friendships changed me — and, unexpectedly, their resilience steadied me through my own seasons of grief and disorientation. That reciprocity — meeting one another in vulnerability and rising stronger together — became the foundation to Glimmer & Grit.
My path has moved through corporate life, motherhood, loss, reinvention, and the hard identity questions that arrive in my third chapter, I know what it feels like when the life you built shifts beneath your feet. Along the way, reading, writing, cooking, and meaningful conversation became tools for making sense of complexity — in families, politics, aging, technology, and democracy.
I believe most people are doing the best they can. And that our hardest chapters often carry the seeds of wisdom and connection.
Glimmer & Grit grew from that lived experience. It’s a safe space for honest stories and thoughtful conversations about change, aging, trauma and recovery, culture, technology, and what it means to stay human in complicated times. I don’t shy away from difficulty or disagreement, but I hold this belief: understanding one another is still possible — and shared stories can turn struggle into strength, difference into connection.
