Once upon a time, I lost my voice.

Literally.

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After meningitis, my brain and my mouth stopped cooperating. Words that had always lived comfortably inside me suddenly couldn’t find their way out. I had to relearn how to speak.

How to form sounds. How to trust that what I was thinking could actually be said.

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But even when I couldn’t speak, I could still write.

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And that changed everything.

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Writing became the place where my thoughts were still whole.
Where nothing interrupted me.
Where I didn’t have to explain myself or keep up or perform.

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When my brain couldn’t sort fact from fear and everything felt distorted, writing was the one place I could still tell what was real.

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So I wrote. A lot.

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Over the years, writing stopped being a hobby or a goal and became something closer to survival.

When I had nowhere else to turn, I turned inward and wrote until the pain loosened its grip. Until the noise quieted. Until healing didn’t feel quite so impossible anymore.

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Like many of you, I’ve lived through more than one version of myself.

Some of them were out of necessity. Some were shaped by expectations I didn’t choose.

For a long time, I lived inside a box that someone else designed.

Roles, responsibilities, rules that I thought made sense at the time… Until they didn’t.

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Losing my mom cracked that box wide open.

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Grief has a way of doing that. It takes what you thought was permanent and rearranges everything. Suddenly, I was standing in a life that was mine to choose, without a map. 

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I wasn’t who I had been before, but I wasn’t sure who I was allowed to be next.

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Turns out, I’m still figuring that out.

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What I do know is this. I finally have my voice back. And I’m learning how to use it. Honestly, creatively, sometimes awkwardly, sometimes humorously, but always with intention.

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I write across genres and under different names because one voice was never going to be enough. Some stories let me disappear into someone else’s skin. Into characters who are braver, stronger, or freer than I am.

Some are confessions Some come straight from things I've either survived or grieved my way through. Others let me work the darker edges while still wrestling with the light.

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Every one of them, though, comes from the same place. A belief that stories help us survive what we don't yet know how to say out loud... or don't yet have the strength to rewrite.

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That belief is why I write books.
Why I host a podcast.
Why I sit with writers and help them untangle their own stories.
Why Second Story Studios exists at all.

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​This isn’t a place built on having it all figured out. I certainly don't.

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It’s a place for thinking out loud. For learning the craft. For telling the truth gently or fiercely. For rewriting old narratives and experimenting with new ones.

For people who are healing, creating, questioning, or standing at the edge of something unfinished. Something they don't yet understand.

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That edge is familiar to me.
It’s where most of my stories, and a lot of my life, have begun.

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So, welcome to my life.

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I’m funny. I'm curious. I'm introspective, sometimes to a fault.

And I’m still learning, every single day, how to be me.

The beautiful thing is, I finally get to decide what I do with my voice.

And I don't plan to waste a single moment, living inside my second story now.

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If any of this resonates — welcome.
You are in the right place.

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​If you want to know what built this place and why it matters to me,

you’re welcome deeper inside.

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If you'd rather lose yourself in a story, you can step right this way.