Freelance Journalist and Memoirist

I'm a freelance journalist and disability rights activist, and I have an online vintage jewelry business. I love to read, travel, garden and spend time with my husband and daughter, who is a senior in high school. A native Texan, I've lived on O'ahu for 18 years after moving from New York City, where, in a previous life, I was a pastry chef. I'm currently writing a memoir about how doctors told me I was crazy for 20 years before I diagnosed myself with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome.

What are your thoughts on aging?

I love being in my forties. I'm comfortable with who I am, and I don't care what anyone else thinks about me. I'm looking forward to my "empty nest" days once my daughter graduates from high school and goes off to college. And as someone who has health issues, I'm thrilled to be alive, active, and working.

What wonderful things can younger women look forward to at your age? Younger women and girls, might think that it's scary getting older. Let's inspire them!

The older I get, the more confidence I gain. I've discovered what serves me in my life, and I can let go of the people and things that don't make my life better. I've also had a major career change and am now in the creative space I've always wanted to live in. After child-raising, I'm now better able to focus on my own needs and desires. It feels powerful.

Share tips on how you celebrate yourself, what you do for fun, and self care.

When I need a good dose of peace and beauty, I drive up to Ka'ena Point in Mokuleia. There's a spot down below the parking lot that is full of sea glass, so I go down there and sift for beach gems for a while. I also love to thrift- the Wahiawa Goodwill is a hidden gem.

Share one experience/story. We all have life struggles. But the big share is how did you over come and lift yourself up? Advice to other women to empower them.

When I realized I needed a wheelchair to get out of the house and hand controls in my car to drive, it was crushing. I was having a lot of chronic pain and was fainting when I stood for longer than two or three minutes. When my chair eventually arrived, and I sat in it, I nearly burst into tears. Not from sadness, but from relief at how it cushioned and supported my body. I picked my daughter up from school that day (she was 9 or so), and before we left, we ran a race on the school's basketball court. Or rather, she ran, and I wheeled. It was the first time since she was a toddler that we could race each other. It was one of the best days of my life, and I learned that wheelchairs and other accessibility devices aren't a negative- instead, they give people their lives back. I now have a sticker on the back of my chair that reads "Wheelchair-Freed".

What would you tell your 14-year-old self?

You're gonna get out of Texas, and go to culinary school, move to NYC and meet a good man, and then go live somewhere beautiful and peaceful where you raise a girl who has your stubbornness. You're going to be published, and travel, and finally find a good therapist who will help you process the trauma you are living today. You get out.

What is the best advice you have been given?

Just write. You can edit later, you can change things up, but you have to actually start the thing. It's the beginning that's the most important, and the hardest part. 

Twenty years from now, when you look at these portraits we took together, what do you think you will say to yourself?

These are the pictures that represent the end of a health battle and the beginning of a solid career as a journalist and writer. That I was stronger than I realized, and more beautiful.