Stepping Out From Behind the Scenes

After 25 years of helping tell other people’s stories, I am learning how to stand inside my own.

For more than 25 years, I helped create the worlds behind other people’s stories. I painted backgrounds, dressed sets, decorated rooms, and designed the details surrounding the person everyone else was watching.

Being the person in front has always been much harder.

I learned early how to read a room. My childhood was shaped by chaos and domestic violence, so I became highly attuned to what was happening around me—the energy, the tension, the things being said without words. That awareness eventually made me very good at creating environments and telling stories visually. It also made me very good at staying useful behind the scenes without allowing myself to be fully seen.

That is something I am trying to change.

This past February, I attended a Chinese New Year celebration where an intuitive was answering questions onstage. I had been challenging myself to do more things that made me uncomfortable, because I believe those same things make me feel most alive.

So I stood up in front of a room full of people and asked my question.

When I spoke about the work I am building now—bringing aesthetics and awareness together, helping people read their own rooms, understand what their spaces are revealing, and create environments that better reflect the lives they are trying to live—Jenny D was listening.

Afterward, she approached me and invited me onto her podcast.

That small act of bravery led to this podcast conversation.

We talked about art, grief, signs from the other side, rebuilding a life, working behind the scenes in the entertainment industry, and what it means to finally step forward and tell your own story.

This conversation was not simply about my work.

It was part of the work.

It was me practicing what I am still learning: I do not have to disappear in order to create something meaningful.

Thank you, Jenny, for giving me such a warm and honest place to step forward.

Listen to our conversation here—and please follow Jenny while you are there. She tells real stories about real people, and I believe we need more of that type of honesty out there.

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