TheStory.

Beginnings.

I grew up in a small town outside of Boston, in a household that taught me how to read a room before I could read a book. The environment was abusive: verbally, physically, psychologically. I didn't have the language for "survival mode" at the time, but looking back I can see it clearly. The survival skills were already bone-deep long before I knew what to call them.

Things shifted when I moved in with my dad. It was a safer environment, and within that safety something in me started to show itself. I came out at fourteen, and honestly, I'm really grateful it wasn't the traumatic experience it can be for others. It was difficult in its own ways because of what I was still carrying inside, but my family, my friends, and my community made me feel safe.

My first love coincided with my coming out. A year and a half of something real. Something special. Something that has stuck with me ever since.

But safety isn't the same as freedom. I was the kid who was friends with everyone and felt immeasurably lonely inside. A part of me was still living in the house I no longer lived in. Even inside that first love, the loneliness didn't fully leave me. It couldn't. It had built its home somewhere deeper than any one person could reach.

What I can say now is that what saved me was curiosity. I wanted to understand people. I wanted to understand myself. I wanted to understand why some things felt like home and others felt like survival. That question never stopped asking itself, and I'm still answering it.

Leaving.

I wanted to move to LA right out of high school to pursue acting. I had this dream of hosting my own talk show, of being the person who asks the real questions on a big stage. I didn't do it. I got stuck in the cycle many people at that age get stuck in: work, drinking, repeat, tell yourself you'll figure it out later.

Then at twenty-one, I lost my dad. Suddenly. Unexpectedly. He was young. Grief cracked something open in me that hasn't fully closed since, and in hindsight, I'm glad it didn't.

Six months later I met someone, and a couple of months into dating he told me he was moving to Arizona. He asked if I'd come. I said fuck it, nothing is holding me back. I packed my car with whatever fit, drove across the country with $300 in my pocket, and landed in a state I had never set foot in before.

We lasted about two years. But I'm grateful to him to this day, because he got me out. Those first four years in Tucson were the first time I felt seen, accepted, and like I belonged. A big part of who I innately am finally had room to come out of hiding.

After four years I could feel myself getting comfortable, which for me has always been the warning sign, not the goal. Inspired by my friend Marie-Claire, I moved to Phoenix. Another four years of growth, romance, heartbreak, and learning how to hold all of it.

Losing.

In January of 2020, I lost my sister. She was twenty-four. It was sudden, violent, traumatic, and it changes you in ways I still don't have language for.

There is no tidy way to write about the death of a sibling. There's only before and after. Before her death, I was a person living a life. After, I was a person who knew, in my body, not just my head, that none of this is guaranteed. The clock we all pretend isn't running is, in fact, running.

Shortly after, I started therapy. Really started. I went deep. EMDR became my primary modality, and I've been doing it on and off ever since. EMDR is where I finally got to meet my trauma as an adult instead of a child. Where I learned I could hold it. Where I could sit with my younger self and say: we're okay now. We have control of our own life. We are safe.

I'm still in therapy to this day. I'll be in therapy forever, probably. It didn't just help me; it fundamentally built the person I became. It gave me confidence. It taught me what love actually is. It showed me how to experience life without letting life drive the car.

Rebuilding.

In 2022, I took a forty-eight hour trip to Los Angeles to learn how to surf in Santa Monica. While I was there, standing in the ocean, getting knocked around by waves, I thought, I need to do this every day.

So I did what I do. I said fuck it. I moved to LA with almost no preparation. That's a whole story in itself, but the short version is this: I've never once regretted moving somewhere on a whim. Every time, it's brought me exactly where I needed to be. Not always geographically. Emotionally, mentally, spiritually.

LA has taught me so much about who I want to be and who I absolutely don't. Some of the clearest lessons have come from knowing what I'll never align with (cough, Beverly Hills). That matters as much as knowing what I do want. Maybe more.

Now.

I'm finally at the point in my life where I feel fully comfortable in who I am, in all of the ways. The writing, the podcast, the poems, the coaching. They're all the same project, which is me trying to be useful with everything I've lived through and learned.

But I want to be honest about something: I am a canvas still being painted. I don't have it all figured out. I don't have all the answers. I'm not better than anyone. I am a flawed human who still makes mistakes and still has blind spots. What I'm committed to is finding them and doing the work to fix them.

If there's a thread through all of this, it's that I've never stopped being curious. About people, about pain, about beauty, about what it actually means to be alive inside a body for the brief time we get. That's what the work is about. That's what the site is for.