My Story

"I’d like to thank my terrible childhood, and the academy… in that order.”
When Robert Downey Jr. opened his acceptance speech at the 2024 Oscars in this way, something in me nodded. Humor aside, I understood what he meant. The hardest parts of my story shaped the heart of my work. My experiences made me curious about why we suffer, how we heal, and what it takes to feel at home in ourselves again (or for the first time). 

​

I grew up as the oldest and only daughter of four kids in a Jehovah’s Witness household. No birthdays, no Christmas, no Easter egg hunts (though there was plenty of eggshell-walking). What I missed in celebration, I carried in responsibility. I took on roles no child should have to fill: my dad’s therapist, my mom’s confidante, my brothers’ caretaker. Security was a myth, and my self-esteem lived somewhere between “Armageddon is coming” and “you’ve lost God’s favor.”

​​

I spent years shape-shifting to survive in a world where authenticity was branded as sin. When I finally left, I realized what I’d been living in wasn’t faith, but a system built on fear and control. For the high premium I paid in loyalty and silence, I was left hollow and found myself and carrying an identity so fractured that even freedom felt perilous. 

 

Leaving the only world I knew meant entering one I’d been taught my whole life to be “no part of,” a world deemed forbidden and wrong. And yet, that was the very place where I began to come home to myself.

They say people are like tea bags: you don’t know how strong you are until you’re in hot water. As someone whose life has often felt like a rolling boil, I know what it takes to rebuild—to gather the pieces, to make meaning from pain, and to grow something new in the aftermath.

​

So if you’re carrying your own mix of “big T” and “little t” traumas, pull up a chair. Let’s have some tea.