Bunni Ambrosia – From Skipping School to 700,000 Safe Miles (Out of Spite, Mostly)
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Bunni Ambrosia is a life coach, author, and truck driver. A master of reinvention, she turned life’s sharpest curves, from high school dropout to graduate school and from child bride to empty nester, into a testament to grit, resilience, and thriving through every unexpected veer.
Bunni Ambrosia Vroom Vroom Veer Show Summary
This week, Jeff sits down with Bunni Ambrosia, author, life coach, and former long-haul trucker. Her story starts in a camper behind her dad’s work truck and includes dropping out of school, becoming a mom as a teenager, and finding out much later why her brain works the way it does. She also got her CDL in four weeks, and she tells it all with a sense of humor that keeps the conversation moving.
A childhood on the road
- Bunni spent her earliest years following her dad’s phone-line installation contracts across the country in a camper. She lived in about half the states before she turned five.
- Starting school was a shock. She remembers being a kid who had seen the world and sitting next to classmates who had never left town. She says it felt suffocating.
The third-grader who skipped school
- In third grade, Bunni started skipping. She walked her little brother to school, then spent the day in the field next door eating mulberries, chasing rabbits, and playing with the yearling cows.
- Nobody called home for 24 days, and she still had straight A’s.
- She kept the A’s until the day she dropped out in ninth grade.
Growing up fast
- Bunni married at 16, became a mom, and was widowed at 17. She shares the story of her daughter’s birth and the nurse who stayed a double shift to be with her.
- She and her daughter grew up together. Bunni says her daughter recently told her, “I think we did a good job.”
Late-in-life answers
- Bunni talks about being diagnosed with ADHD, autism, and oppositional defiant disorder, and how those diagnoses finally made sense of her childhood.
- Her daughter played a part in her getting diagnosed.
- She talks about why ADHD often gets missed in women, and what it’s like to manage it while holding a CDL.
Becoming a trucker, out of spite
- In the middle of a divorce, with no access to money, Bunni came across a YouTube video about a grant for women entering male-dominated careers. She found a similar grant in her own state, got her permit in days, and entered trucking school in St. Paul.
- The school typically takes about three months. Bunni finished in four weeks and passed her driving test on the first try.
- She specialized in hauling UTVs, ATVs, motorcycles, and snowmobiles, and once delivered to a Southern California country club in an 18-wheeler.
- She drove over 700,000 safe miles without hitting anything.
- She mailed her ex a framed copy of her first-year tax return.
Her books
- Her first book is Basket Case: An Argument for Crazy
- Her new book, The Frog in the Machine, is about AI. She set out to write it without picking a side in the “it’ll save us or destroy us” debate, and every reference is listed in the back of the book for readers who want to check her sources.
- She already has a few more books in mind.
Also in this episode
- Why time might not be real, with Twin Peaks and A Wrinkle in Time as guides
- Why Bunni is going back to school for her psychology degree
- The power of spite as a life strategy
https://www.instagram.com/bunniambrosia
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