I almost died. And then I chose to live on purpose.
I was twenty when they found it. A 13-centimeter tumor on my ovary- large enough that my body had been quietly rearranging itself around it for god knows how long. Emergency surgery. The kind where they tell your family to wait.
But here's the thing that surprises people. The diagnosis felt like relief.
Not because I wanted to be sick. Because everything before it had been worse- and none of it had a name. By twenty, I had survived rape, addiction, homelessness, the death of the person closest to me. I was deeply depressed, racking up DUIs, disappearing into whatever would make the noise stop. There was no tumor to point to for any of that. No surgery to schedule. Just the slow ugly work of being a person who hadn't yet decided whether she wanted to stay.
Cancer forced the question. Do you want to live?
And if so- what does that actually look like?
After surgery I started over. Not in a clean, linear way- in the way real transformation actually works. Messy. Nonlinear. Full of backsliding. I studied plant medicine and herbalism. Spent a decade across 14 countries- each one changed me in ways I'm still discovering. Studied with midwives in Guatemala and Hawaii. Enrolled at The Herbal Academy. Got obsessed with traditional foodways, fermentation, the kind of nourishment that doesn't come in a supplement bottle. I started paying attention to cycles- menstrual, lunar, seasonal- and noticed that every system in my body worked differently when I stopped fighting the rhythms and started following them.
I studied human psychology the way some people study religion. Obsessively, across traditions, looking for the common thread. Somatic work. Parts work. Archetypal frameworks. Nervous system science. Initiatory practices from cultures that understood what modern culture has forgotten- that humans need thresholds, not just therapy. That growth requires crossing something. Not just understanding it.
Along the way I became a mother. My daughter- the Cub- was born on the Big Island of Hawaii on a new moon just before a solar eclipse. All three of us were born that night. Her. Me. And whoever we'd become together.
Her arrival reorganized everything. Not just my schedule. My understanding of what matters. What to pass on. What to protect. How to build a life that a child can actually learn from- not one where the adults are performing wellness while falling apart behind closed doors.
I spent years building in private. Writing books, developing frameworks, creating oracle systems, guiding people through threshold moments one-on-one. Not because I was hiding- though sometimes I was. Because the work needed roots before it could stand in public.
Multiple manuscripts. An entire archetypal system called The Becoming. AI tools that made people cry the first time they used them. All of it created in the margins of motherhood- between feedings and garden beds and the particular kind of exhaustion that only solo parents understand.
I've sat holding ceremony for two men eight months pregnant- screaming and reclaiming themselves in front of me. I've taken a man on a reclaiming ritual while my daughter napped. I've helped a woman finally grieve an abortion from years past that let her reclaim her creative spark- while my daughter napped on the beach. It's always been both and. The work doesn't pause for the life. The life doesn't pause for the work. They're the same thing.
I don't want to be your guru. I've always been clear on that.
Ryan was interviewing me once for some content we were working on. He asked me why people should listen to me. My response was- they shouldn't. They should learn how to strengthen their own signal and listen to themselves.
I stand by that still.
And if they need support in uncovering and reclaiming their signal- I'm here for it. What's right for you is discoverable only by you. I'm here for the uncovering.
The body remembers what the mind forgets. Start there.
Life's purpose is to experience it. Not to optimize it, hack it, or transcend it. To be in it. Fully. With the mess included.
I spent years believing that the weight I was carrying was just how life felt. That everybody walked around with that heaviness and some people were just better at performing okay. It's not true. The anxiety, the depression- they're not life sentences. I went underneath all of it and changed what was actually there. And now peace isn't something I strive for- it's where I live.
No one is coming to save you. That's not a threat. It's an invitation to become the person who doesn't need saving.
The build and the becoming are not separate paths. They are the third path.
How I actually work — the methodology →
If something is resonating- here are the doors that are open.