My aim as a young adult was to travel the world and live as freely as possible to cultivate my inner artist. So I freed myself from obligations, responsibilities, and everything convention had to offer. But freedom was not as freeing as I thought it would be. No matter my escape from outward restrictions, the internal fears, insecurities and worries landed me in something of a cage.

When an unnamed disease began to take me down at age twenty-four, the restrictions became physical, and at times I could barely walk across a room or harness the energy to feed myself. It would take three years for the disease to find a name, but in those three years lying in beds and on couches, I was not idle. I was working- or God was working- on my thoughts, emotional processes, and identity. Then I would be told I had cancer. 

We can’t always see what’s on the other side. What looks like utter darkness may be just the cocoon we needed.

After recovering, I turned to exercise and diet to rebuild my health and became physically stronger than ever. I began to find the freedom I had set out for, and it wasn’t where I thought it would be. True freedom I discovered was to endure what was difficult to attain what was purposeful. The resilience that I’d gained would give me the authority to help others escape from mental patterns and cages. 

When I entered my thirties, I had little to show for myself but survival. My twenties appeared to be nothing but a stain on my story. But that season was not a stain; it was a brush stroke on a Monet. That was right before the pandemic hit.

Suddenly a whole generation was locked down at home during key developmental stages. Mental illness skyrocketed off the charts especially for young people.

When I talk to people who were affected by the pandemic, I feel like I know what they are going through, and they feel the connection too. I can help them advance forward with the same resilience techniques I developed while locked down from sickness and mental hurdles.

I want to help them see, there’s no such thing as lost time, and the deficits they are facing now can in fact be overcome.