Photo by Sol Ponce on Unsplash

More Than the Version You Know

I’ve spent years being known in pieces.

Depending on when you met me, you might know me as the horse rescue person, the web developer, the nonprofit strategist, the family history nerd, or just someone who always has an answer when no one else does. You wouldn’t be wrong. But you also wouldn’t be seeing the full picture.

The truth is, most people only know a version of me shaped by the work we’ve done together, the moments we’ve shared, or the lens of the present. And honestly? That’s not just a social thing; it’s how I’ve moved through life. In pieces.

For a long time, splitting myself into roles—professional me, emotional me, private me, resilient me—was necessary. Helpful, even. But lately, I’ve been asking what it would mean to put them all in one place. To write from all of me, not just the part that fits the audience.

This space, this blog, is where I want to gather those parts again.

It won’t be a niche blog, because I’m not a niche person. Some days I’ll write about nonprofit leadership or the legal logistics of running an animal rescue. Other days, I might talk about the woman buried in the back of a forgotten cemetery and how her story helped me understand my own. And sometimes, I’ll go deeper into questions of consciousness, interconnection, grief, and the strange ways we come to understand ourselves.

I’ll share pieces of my story that I’ve kept quiet, too. About being a teen mom before it was normalized. About fighting for custody and winning. About learning to forgive as part of my own healing process, not because anyone asked for it. And about the man I married at 21 (who was 49) and how, despite what anyone might assume, we were exactly right for each other.

He was a former cop, a private investigator, a firearms instructor, a radio DJ, and an author. He was brilliant and complicated and full of stories—some of which I still don’t know if they were true. But many were. Including the one where I found myself helping investigate a RICO case at 21, dealing with sealed court records, and ending up with what I’m fairly sure is a CIA file.

His death in 2003 changed the trajectory of my life in ways I’m still uncovering. The grief was seismic. It silenced things I didn’t realize could be quieted in me. And it left me carrying a legacy—his and mine—that I’m only now learning how to name.

I’ve lived many versions of myself. And I’m still becoming. This blog is where I put the pieces back together ... on my own terms.