Growing up, I was always trying to help one of my depressed caregivers feel happy. At six years old, I suggested Disneyland as the solution. It made perfect sense to me. If someone was sad, surely there was a place, a ride, a magical experience that could make everything better.

For years, I tried to help this person choose life. I wanted to fix the sadness I saw. I wanted to make things better. Like many children in that situation, I absorbed more than I understood. I took on this person’s depression. I took on this person’s insecurity. I learned to see the world through the lens of fear, sadness, and self-doubt.

Then, at twenty-one, after a painful breakup, I had a realized I could change my life. I didn’t have to live the way I was living. I didn’t have to be consumed by insecurity and jealousy. I didn’t have to be depressed. For the first time, I began the process of healing. It wasn’t easy. 

Healing rarely is. Years later, when I became a writer, my agent gave me a piece of advice that would shape my career: ”Open a vein.” I took that advice to heart. I gave my protagonists my fears. I gave them my insecurities. I gave them my wounds. Then I watched them struggle.

Fight. Fail. Grow. Heal.

In many ways, my characters became test subjects for my own transformation. Rewiring a brain to think differently is no easy feat. There were many dark nights of the soul. The kind of moments storytellers would recognize as the end of Act 2B—the point where everything feels lost and impossible.

But something remarkable happened. Writing became part of my healing process. Through story, I could examine my beliefs and the world’s beliefs. Through story, I could challenge my fears and my caregiver’s fears. Through story, I could imagine new possibilities. And through story, I discovered that healing is possible.

That’s why I write. To show people that healing can happen. To teach people how to heal themselves. Not through lectures. Not through preaching. Through stories.

Every project I’ve written carries a lesson that emerged from my own healing journey.

Angel Child allowed me to work through jealousy and insecurity in relationships and examine how those emotions can sabotage love.

Unseen explores the idea that our thoughts create the reality we experience and that changing our thinking can change our lives.

Spider Woman was about women confronting her fear of the life she was born into and stepping into her own power.

Cursed explored how greed can slowly consume a person and disconnect them from what truly matters.

The Island captures 20 years of healing techniques and epiphanies that helped me reclaim my life.

Ballroom was written to inspire differently abled people to keep pursuing their dreams, regardless of the obstacles they face. (Coming out this year. Click here to add yourself to the linktree).

Although these stories are very different, they all ask the same question:

What stands in the way of being a healthy happy person? Fear. Shame. Insecurity. Limiting beliefs. Unhealed wounds. Every story I write shines a light on one of those obstacles and offers the possibility of transformation.

Some people see movies as entertainment. I see them as medicine. Stories can help people feel understood. They can help people recognize destructive patterns. They can offer hope. They can inspire change. Most importantly, they can remind us that healing is possible.

Writing helped me heal. Now I write in the hope that my stories help others heal too. Because if a story can change a belief, it can change a life. And if it can change a life, it can change the world.