THE ART OF RISING FROM THE ASHES MY BIO

There comes a moment in every survivor’s life when silence starts to feel heavier than the truth. This is one of those moments for me. I am sharing these memories not to dwell in pain, not to seek pity, but to offer proof. Proof that where you start does not get to decide where you end. Proof that even the deepest ashes can become the soil of something holy.

This is The Art of Rising from the Ashes Chapter 1:

When I think back to my earliest memories, they shimmer like scenes from a dream, too vivid to be fiction and too fragile to be real. I remember the sparkle of my mother’s outfits, fishnets and maid skirts, little frills and lace, like costumes from a story I did not yet understand. At the time, I thought she was magical, like a character from a movie who changed with every scene. I did not know those outfits were not for me. I did not know they were uniforms for survival. My mom was a dancer and a sex worker for much of my early childhood, though I would not have known how to name it then. What I did know was this. We never stayed in one place for long. I remember falling asleep in unfamiliar beds, surrounded by strangers’ smells and shadows. I remember being told to stay quiet, to stay hidden, to stay small. And I did. I learned to be invisible before I ever learned how to read.

The men came and went, and so did we. I did not have the language to describe them, but I remember the feeling in my body, tight in my chest, buzzing in my spine, a constant low hum of fear. Some of them were nice. Most of them were not. And while I cannot recall every face, I remember the ache of being a child surrounded by too many men and not enough safety. There is a memory I do not often speak aloud, the kind that hides in the quiet corners of my mind, too jagged to touch. I was small, curled up in the backseat of a car parked outside a strip club, hidden and forgotten, until someone tried to steal the car with me still inside. It was the kind of chaos I had grown used to, instant, terrifying, unpredictable. My childhood was a pattern of fear stitched together by instability. You never knew where you would wake up or who would be in the next room. But even then, in the deepest ache of not knowing what tomorrow would bring, I knew God was always with me, not as a booming voice or blinding light, but a whisper of safety that somehow kept me breathing.

Loneliness became my first lullaby. I spent most days alone, inventing games, whispering songs to myself in rooms that were not mine. I was too young to name the grief, but I carried it in my skin. Eventually, we found my grandmother, my mother’s mother. It felt like a reunion with a history I did not know I had. But she was not thriving either. We were still unhoused, still surviving. We slept in the car more nights than I can count. I remember thinking it was an adventure, like camping under the stars. I made it magical in my mind, because children do that. They turn pain into play to survive. But as I grew older, the illusion cracked. I saw the truth behind the adventures, the missed meals, the hollow stares, the silence that followed the fights. I began to understand what my mother had done to keep us alive, and I started to feel the weight of what that survival had cost me.

These early years were shaped in the absence of the man I call my father. He is not the man who made me, but the man who chose me. A man who drove across the country to rescue us from a church shelter, me, my mom, and my nanny, three women clinging to what little hope we had left. That shelter was both a sanctuary and a reminder of how far we had fallen. There is one memory from that place I have never been able to explain. I met a little girl with my exact name, spelled just like mine, a spelling so unique I had never seen it before. She looked like me. She was my age. And to this day, I do not know if she was real, an angel sent to comfort me, or a fragment of my mind trying to protect itself. Everyone who could have told me is now gone. But I still hold her in my heart, because she reminds me that even in the loneliest places, Someone was watching over me.

When my father came, we finally had a home. But trauma does not leave when you change locations. It just changes its scenery. At night, our house was full of broken glass and bruised silence. My mother, when she drank, became someone else entirely, volatile, violent, unreachable. She would scream, throw things, attack the man who loved us. My nanny became my shelter. She would grab me, rush me into the closet, cover my ears, and whisper, “You are safe, baby. You are safe.” She was not always able to stay with me. Sometimes she had to leave me hidden, hoping she could calm my mother before anyone was seriously hurt. My mother could not always tell the difference between friend and foe when her trauma was triggered. And now, as an adult, I understand why.

She had been handed over to her father as a child, night after night, dressed by her own mother in outfits meant to appease his abuse. They were dirt poor, living in tents and forest clearings. And my mom, barely a girl, paid the rent with her innocence. She was not the only child, but from what I understand, she was the one chosen, or sacrificed. I never knew that version of my nanny. I only knew the one who tried to right her wrongs by fiercely protecting me. She could not save her daughter, but she did everything she could to save me. There were nights when the violence was so intense we had to burn the aftermath, chairs, photos, shattered memories. I remember knives flying across the room. A kitchen chair hurled in my direction. I remember hiding, praying, crying, and sometimes being too late to stay hidden.

But I also remember my mom when she was sober, gentle, generous, a spark of brilliance in her smile. She would hold me and sing, make jokes, offer food to strangers. There was so much love inside her, but it was buried beneath layers of unhealed pain. And when those layers cracked, darkness came flooding through. This is the truth of my beginning. A mother who was both protector and perpetrator. A father who chose me without question. A grandmother who wrapped herself around me like armor. A strange girl with my name who may have been an angel. And a God who never left me, not even in the backseat of a stolen car. But even here, even in the wound, there was still a flicker of something sacred. A longing. A whisper. A rhythm. I did not know it then, but music would become my sanctuary.

I could not escape my story. But I could start to rewrite it. And that begins here, with the truth.

When I look back now, I do not only see what I endured. I see what was being formed in me. I see the way survival taught me how to listen for whispers instead of waiting for miracles. I see how loneliness carved out space in my soul that music would later fill. I see how being unseen taught me to notice the unseen in others. I see how surviving without safety taught me to become safety for the people I serve today.

This is the part of the story people do not always tell. Trauma may shape us, but it does not get to claim us. Pain may mark us, but it does not get to name us. We are not the rooms we were trapped in. We are not the chaos that raised us. We are not the violence we survived. We are the ones who learned how to rise anyway.

If you are reading this and wondering whether your past has already written your future, let me say this clearly. It has not. You are not late to becoming who you were always meant to be. You are not broken beyond repair. You are not too damaged to dream. You are not too scarred to shine. You are not disqualified by your beginnings.

You are proof that fire does not only destroy. Sometimes it refines. Sometimes it reveals. Sometimes it makes room for wings you did not even know you had.

This is the art of rising from the ashes. Not pretending the fire never happened. Not minimizing the pain. But choosing, again and again, to become more than what tried to consume you.

And if no one has told you lately, let me be the one.
Your story is not over.
Your light is not gone.
Your becoming is still unfolding.