Anyone who works in healing eventually discovers this: we’re drawn to it because something in our own lives cracked us open first.
For me, that opening began in high school as I watched my mother move through a long illness. I couldn’t heal her, but I learned how to be fully present with someone in pain. Only later did I realize that was my earliest training in what we now call “holding space”.
I went through college with a pre-med curriculum, hoping knowledge could fix what life had broken. But at graduation, I found myself at a crossroads: follow the long medical path or step toward something more unpredictable, more alive—New York City, with all its creative chaos and possibility.
I chose the path that didn’t look like healing at all. Modeling led me into photography, which eventually led me back to work I was always meant to do—acupuncture, the continuous arc of art, writing, and a way of living that honors intuition as much as training. Healing, I’ve learned, isn’t linear. It spirals. It returns us to the pieces of ourselves we left behind.
This week on Finding the Still Center, my Substack, I’m sharing a story that weaves these threads together—how art, memory, and reinvention have shaped my life. Read here.
The Neon Rebel is included in the exhibition Women Artists of the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia at the Falls Church Gallery, running January 10-February 22.
