JAY – From mother to town manager to state municipal leader, Ruth Marden has crossed another milestone.

Marden, Jay’s town manager, was selected to write an article for Maine Women’s Journal, a quarterly magazine based in Yarmouth that is in its second year. The magazine “for women by women” publishes 15,000 copies, according to its Web site, www.mainewomensjournal.com.

“I’m very honored to be chosen because of the thousands of professional women in the state of Maine. To be featured like this is just amazing for me,” Marden said.

Marden manages a billion-dollar town and advocates for its interests in the state’s halls. She also fishes for trout in the Allagash.

For the magazine, she wrote about running a town and encourages more women to step into the profession.

Her story appears in the summer issue that highlights women in relation to business, community, lifestyle, family, health and wellness, home and garden.

Marden said she suggested the magazine representatives contact a female town manager when they were looking for suggestions for stories.

She thought it would be good because women still hold a minority of town manager positions in Maine, Marden said Thursday.

Of the membership list in the Maine Town and City Managers Association, of which Marden is past president, 36 of 181 members are women.

Magazine representatives came back and said, “That everyone we talked to said ‘you are the one,'” the 56-year-old Wilton woman said.

So she sat down and wrote about why she liked her job and what she did.

But it wasn’t as easy as she expected.

“It was hard to write. I wanted people to know how much I like my job but conveying that in a manner that makes me sound sincere was very difficult and it’s hard to write about yourself,” she said. “Even in a difficult time like right now with the reval(uation), there is no profession I’d rather be in.”