I A

THE CHAOS, THE POETRY, THE STORM, THE BLUEPRINT, THE MAIN CHARACTER, THE GIRL YOU ROOT FOR IN EVERY CHAPTER BECAUSE YOU KNOW I WILL ALWAYS ROOT FOR YOU, AND WHEN I BREAK, I BREAK BEAUTIFULLY - AND I REBUILD BRUTALLY.

I AM EQUAL PARTS WILDFIRE AND SOFT FUR, DESIGNER AND SURVIVOR, LOVER AND FIGHTER, ARTIST AND ATTORNEY (UNOFFICIALLY BUT SPIRITUALLY) EMPATH AND WEAPON,
AND THE FUTURE AUTHOR OF A BOOK

that will make an entire system shit it's pants

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I A

THE CHAOS, THE POETRY, THE STORM, THE BLUEPRINT, THE MAIN CHARACTER, THE GIRL YOU ROOT FOR IN EVERY CHAPTER BECAUSE YOU KNOW I WILL ALWAYS ROOT FOR YOU, AND WHEN I BREAK, I BREAK BEAUTIFULLY - AND I REBUILD BRUTALLY.


I am equal parts wildfire and soft fur, designer and survivor, lover and fighter, artist and attorney (unofficially but spiritually) empath and weapon, and the future author of a book...

at will make an entire system it it's pants

Recent Features

style me pretty / 
romantic mountain elopement

green wedding shoes / 
backyard portland wedding

grey likes weddings / 
summer travel elopement

ruffled / 
beachy engagement session

back 

When you've been living with a story, carrying it around like a 500 lb weight, it goes from being burdensome to lethal. You keep it to yourself because you’re worried that people will think it's a reflection of you. You're worried you'll be judged. And of course...pride. And when you have so many stories to tell that you don’t know where to begin or which story to tell first, you don't tell any at all. Until you're not really left with a choice. 


If you grew up in a small town, live in a small town, or just have a special place in your heart for small towns, you will want to read about my “do good” nonprofit landlords. The reason they ignored every attempt I made at communicating with them leading up to my wrongful eviction, and for the same reason every person and entity in their pocket contributed to what #smalltownamerica fights every day.

Meraki saved my life. My living situation was killing me. It wasn't just a store to me. It was my home. It was the first time that I finally had the one thing I have spent my life fighting for — independence. I did not have to deal with an abusive man disguising control as love. I went home to my apartment and it was mine. My sanctuary. Paid for by me. Everything in it was paid for by me. Everything in my store was paid for by me. It was mine, and no one could threaten me with it, use it against me, throw it in my face, or take it from me.


STORY

vanessa's

I entered the world with a very sensitive bullshit detector, a high IQ I didn't order, a moral compass forged in fire, and a nervous system that said, "Sure, let's feel everything. Why not."

My entire life has been a trauma response.

I learned quickly as a child that adults were about as useful as a broken umbrella in a hurricane. So, I became the emotional support human - the therapist, the peacekeeper, the emotional janitor cleaning up after other people's catastrophes while silently living through my own.

I was born with a high-voltage nervous system.

I was built with high pattern recognition, emotional intelligence, empathy, and a memory that logs detail like evidence (ask me what I was wearing on this day in '98). These are all things that create the perfect storm for a justice-oriented mind.  I was 5 years old the first time someone asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up; my answer was "an attorney or famous." I didn't even know what being an attorney meant. I just knew that it was what I wanted to be. I don't remember saying "abused" when someone asked me what I wanted to be when I grow-up.


Most days I just feel like a feral woodland witch who got dropped into suburban New York against my will.

Most days I just feel like a feral woodland witch who got dropped into suburban New York against my will.

When you've been living with a story, carrying it around like a 500 lb weight, it goes from being burdensome to lethal. You keep it to yourself because you’re worried that people will think it's a reflection of you. You're worried you'll be judged. And of course...pride. And when you have so many stories to tell that you don’t know where to begin or which story to tell first, you don't tell any at all. Until you're not really left with a choice. 




Meraki saved my life. My living situation was killing me. It wasn't just a store to me. It was my home. It was the first time that I finally had the one thing I have spent my life fighting for — independence. I did not have to deal with an abusive man disguising control as love. I went home to my apartment and it was mine. My sanctuary. Paid for by me. Everything in it was paid for by me. Everything in my store was paid for by me. It was mine, and no one could threaten me with it, use it against me, throw it in my face, or take it from me.

If you grew up in a small town, live in a small town, or just have a special place in your heart for small towns, you will want to read about my “do good” nonprofit landlords. The reason they ignored every attempt I made at communicating with them leading up to my wrongful eviction, and for the same reason every person and entity in their pocket contributed to what #smalltownamerica fights every day.

I didn't have to live someone else's life 

In the past that's what i had to do - live someone else's life - just to have a roof over my head. Meraki changed that. It positioned me to no longer have to check myself into a hospital at the end of a relationship because I had no support, I was too beaten up to figure out how to take care of myself, and I couldn’t hold down a job. I wouldn't have to stay in a shitty relationship far past it's expiration date ever again. I could finally start doing things from a place of want instead or a place of need or survival. I wouldn’t ever have to run away again. I could finally put down roots and build something for myself. I finally had things that I have never had in my entire life: safety and stability. Provided by me. And I have tried so hard throughout my life to have those things. I didn’t even have a chance to truly get my business off the ground. I was faced with one hardship after another, and on top of the emotional fallout of each hardship, the financial fallout has been equally as devastating. I took out loans and ran up credit card debt that I otherwise would never have had to do.  The credit that I worked so hard to build - destroyed. 

When you lose everything that you worked for that finally made you feel like you had something to be proud of, like you could finally breathe, you stopped wanting to run away, you stopped thinking all the worst things a person can think about themselves; when that's taken from you, after you have been financially wiped out again and again and again through no fault of your own, and you are then silenced, ignored, harassed, abused, unheard, misjudged, neglected…it destroys you.

I have never thought of myself as a victim or a survivor. I am a fighter.

Besides my dogs, Meraki was the thing that made me get out of bed in the morning. I had an unnecessary total hysterectomy when I was 33 so I was never able to have a family. Meraki was it for me, and I made my peace with that. This was the path I ended up on, and I did everything I could to make it one in which I felt purpose. Meraki gave me something I never had before: Freedom. Freedom to choose, freedom to do what I wanted when I wanted, freedom to allow my nervous system to finally begin to regulate, freedom to be me. 

I was just starting to really get to know myself when the rug was pulled out from under me. Again. And again. And again. After the first flood happened I stopped feeling safe. I was scrambling to do whatever I had to in order to keep my business up and running without creating a tremendous amount of debt in the process. 

I have been climbing uphill against 100 mph winds for my entire life just to try to be me.

What I have learned is that the consequences, when SOMEONE EXPERIENCES A TRAUMA CAUSED BY ANOTHER PERSON, belong solely to the person who is traumatized. 

I built Meraki by myself, down to the driftwood that the clothes hung on that I foraged down by the river. I was proud of myself. I stopped trying to hide who I was. I was also proud of what I had created aesthetically, and I was humbled by my loyal customers and the community I was quickly forging. The business was growing so quickly I couldn’t keep up. For the first time in my 44 years of living I did not have the urge to be somewhere else or run away. I wanted to build roots and be part of a community. 

I haven’t had a vacation in over 10 years. What happened with the store is the only thing I think about if my mind is not distracted with something else. My anger has not dissipated. My sadness has not lessened. Both have gotten worse. I'm angrier than I have ever been. Of all the emotions I've struggled with, anger has never been one of them. I have no motivation. I've never felt more unheard in my life.  And I am being abused by someone whose abuse continues to escalate; he won't stop until a judge forces him to or until he kills me. On January `12th, 2026, I took the first step to protect myself and was granted a full order of protection - for me and my dogs.



This is what happens when a Court and Nonprofit Housing Organization ignore you when you say that you're going to end up back with an abuser; after fighting with everything you had to get out.

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

The person, or people, who caused the trauma — they’re not effected by what they did. They get to live their lives as though nothing ever happened. And the thing is, there is no amount of money, no apology great enough that can give me back the time that was taken from me. There is nothing that can give me back the time I have spent trying to “heal from” or “deal with” PTSD as a result of what other people have done to me.

Of all the emotions I have struggled with, anger was never one of them.

It is now.



When bullying continues unchecked and despite reports, adults' silence teaches the victim that their pain doesn't matter. 

That lesson sticks.

15 - 17 years old is a critical period of time in your life when your brain is doing some of its most intense construction work:
- Identity formation (Who am I?)
- Social ranking and belonging (Where do I fit?)
- Autonomy and self-trust (Can I protect myself?)
- Nervous system calibration (Is the world safe or dangerous?)
So when bullying is chronic, targeted, humiliating, or inescapable, the brain doesn't code it as kids being mean. It codes it as social threat and powerlessness. The nervous system treats it as danger. When you're bullied it effects your nervous system; it puts you in a state of  constant hypervigilance, fight/flight/freeze responses that feel uncontrollable, it messes with your sleep, your stomach, and your head, you can become emotionally numb or dissociate. You internalize shame because you think there must be something wrong with you if you're being targeted, you learn helplessness when it continues because you feel like nothing you do can change it, and if authority figures constantly fail you - you lose trust in them. You start to shrink to avoid attention, dumb yourself down, maybe not put makeup on or dress the way you normally would. You become hyper-self-aware or self-critical.  You start to pick apart every part of your body. You feel visible in the worst way and invisible in the ways that matter. 

In adulthood it manifests as a strong fear of rejection or abandonment, being overly tolerant of  someone treating you like shit because it feels familiar, when someone shows you kindness you don't trust it, and you continually attract controlling or dismissive people into your life. You feel chronically unheard - even when speaking clearly, you second guess your perception about things and start to gaslight yourself, i.e. "Am I overreacting?" (No. You're not.) You also see manipulation faster and easier, read micro-expressions instantly, and expect betrayal before it happens. Your nervous system adapts brilliantly to survive, and when no one comes back to help you recalibrate you end up with an unhealed alarm system that never got turned off. 

I was bullied by a group of girls horribly in high school; this was back in the mid-late 90s. I graduated in 1998 and things were handled much differently back then - i.e. they weren’t really handled at all. I spent every single day in the principal’s office after being shoulder slammed by someone, or called a cunt, a whore - whatever the word of the day was - in the hallway. Shoulder slammed: one of the girls would walk past me, and “accidentally“ slam my shoulder as hard as they could with their shoulder. I was terrified every time I saw one of them walking towards me because I knew I would either be called a name or shoulder slammed. I had food thrown all over my car, they came to the place that I worked, which was our local grocery store, and would purposely come through my line and throw money at me. They carved “slut” into my locker. They would drive past my house at night and sit on the road at the bottom of my driveway, they would tailgate me, chase me, they ran me off the road a couple of times. I made more police reports than I can count; the sheriff who I reported every incident to became such a normal part of my daily life that he would come to my house for coffee when I needed to talk to him or make a report. 

They wrote “big titted whore” on a friend's locker with huge red marker that went from the top of her locker to the bottom. They made a drawing with Nazi symbols and put it in my friend’s locker because she had big lips - she was also Romanian so no....it did not make any sense. They made a drawing of me with one of my cars, making fun of me - which I found on the floor of my english classroom. I don't know if they left it there on purpose or not, but I suspect.

The result of all of this was me missing so many days of school my junior year that I had to go to summer school - where I was also bullied. I don't know why I was targeted by other girls the way that I was...I have always been a girls girl. When I was younger I would get jealous of girls that I perceived to have a better life than me, but I learned very quickly that when you allow yourself to feel happy for someone, route for them, lift them up, and look at them as something to aspire to instead of being jealous, life is much more pleasant. Comparison is truly the thief of joy. 

Maybe there's something about my face that got under the skin of the girls who bullied me. I don't know the answer to that, but what I do know? There were never any consequences for any of these girls. The person who had to deal with the consequences was me. My principal did nothing. Nothing was ever done to stop this from happening until my mother decided it would be a good idea to hold an intervention of sorts. One day we all got together in the cafeteria, put our chairs in a circle, hashed it out, and I was never bullied again. Before that day my mother was called every single day to come to the school because I had been bullied, and she almost lost her job because of it. There is no way on earth that any of this would have been allowed to go on for as long as it did, or create the consequences that it created today.

What I have learned is that the consequences, when there is any sort of traumatic experience that occurs, belong to the person who is traumatized. I have spent my life trying to “manage“ or “heal from” or “deal with” the consequences of what other people did to me throughout my life that created trauma. 




BULLIES

high school

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