Small Ripples: How I Got Here and Why I Speak
You’re probably wondering who I am.
At my core, I’m still the awkward, gangly, frumpy missionary kid from Africa. That part of me never left. In my heart of hearts, this is who I will always be.
I was born in Africa, where my parents worked, and I lived there until I was thirteen. There came a strange day when I realized I had lived in America just as long as I had lived in Africa. That day felt…disorienting. Like standing between two worlds that both felt like home, and neither at the same time.
There’s a term for that- Third Culture Kid. It means you don’t fully belong to the culture you grew up in, and you don’t fully belong to the culture your parents came from either. You grow up fluent in adaptation. You learn how to read rooms, people, danger, and emotion early. You learn that in every “hello,” there is a “goodbye.” You learn how to survive in the in between.
That was me. Always wanting to belong. Rarely feeling like I did.
I earned my Master’s in Social Work just weeks before giving birth to my twin micro-preemies– three months early. I had planned to be a school social worker.
Life had other plans.
I went on to have two more babies. All four were premature. All four had special needs from the very beginning.
We didn’t do soccer practice.
We did therapies.
Every day. Multiple hours a day. Each child.
While my neighbors loaded minivans with uniforms, cleats and balls, I loaded mine with sensory tools, anxiety, meltdowns, fidgets, and hope. I learned to function in crisis as a baseline. There was always something: behavioral, psychiatric, emotional, medical.
I got up every morning and showered and dressed like I was going to work, because I never knew where the day would take me.
Would we end up at the ER?
Would we make it to therapy?
Would I get called into school?
Would I cross paths with someone, angry, who didn’t understand my children?
I lived on alert. Always. I stayed eight steps ahead of all of my children so I could prevent as many rages and meltdowns and tears as possible.
Those years held enormous joy- my children are my greatest gift- and also immense trauma. Eventually, after years of advocating alone, I was able to get all of us accurately diagnosed with Lyme disease, co-infections, and PANS/PANDAS- Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorder Associated with Strep.
Finding answers changed everything. Treatment gave us our lives back, inch by inch.
Somewhere along the way, I found myself pulled into the world of EMS, and I was hooked. I never would have imagined this is where I would find my people.
But I did.
For the first time, I felt like I belonged.
I became a paramedic while navigating divorce and continuing to advocate for four kids with complex needs.
I had never lived alone. I had never had utilities under my name. I had never done so many things by myself. And yet, here I was, showing up, learning to trust myself, and realizing I had survived far more than I ever gave myself credit for.
I honestly don’t know how I found the courage to keep showing up every single day of my life. Fear has been a familiar, constant, companion:
fear of school, fear of safety, fear of being seen, fear of failing.
But I knew one thing with absolute certainty: No one was coming to save me. I had to save my own life.
Growing up in a developing nation shaped me in ways I’m endlessly grateful for. I remember lying in my bedroom when I was a child, feeling the heartbeat of Africa around me, tears on my cheeks because I wanted so desperately to save the world. To make life easier for those who struggled. I promised I would change things.
As we get older, we’re told that “saving the world” is naive. Impossible. Unrealistic.
I never believed that.
I’ve learned that I can’t control the world, but I can control how I show up in it. I can tend my small corner with kindness, steadiness, and care. I can help the people I run into. I can be a light that comforts, supports, and can be trusted.
And those small ripples? They matter.
Maybe I won’t change the world. But I will keep showing up. I will keep telling the truth. And I will keep believing that presence- real, human presence- can make life better.
That’s why I’m here. That’s what I speak about. And that’s what I’m committed to.
This is why I speak the way I do. Not from theory, or distance, or a polished pedestal, but from lived experience. From years spent in crisis, in systems that didn’t work, in bodies and families pushed to their limits. From motherhood, illness, advocacy, EMS, and survival.
I’ve sat on both sides of the stretcher.
I’ve been the calm in the chaos and the one quietly unraveling afterward.
I know what it costs to keep showing up, and I know how much it matters when someone finally tells the truth about that cost.
If you’re here because you’re tired, or searching, or trying to make sense of the weight you carry, you’re in the right place.
These words are for you.
This is a place for truth, steadiness, and the kind of light that knows how hard it was won.
I used to write during the years when my kids were small. Those words belong to an earlier version of me, but they matter too.