Our story

I wasn’t taught how to feel.
I was taught how to survive.

Growing up, emotions weren’t something we talked about.
Emotional regulation. Processing. Release.
They weren’t part of the conversation.

Like so many others, I carried what I didn’t know how to release until survival started to wear down everything underneath it.

It took years of unlearning, healing, and reclaiming my voice to finally see what was missing, not just in my own life, but everywhere around me:

We’re not teaching people how to sit with emotions before they become a crisis.
We’re not building access to emotional health early, where it can prevent breakdown before it takes root.

And I knew this wasn’t just my story.
This is happening across entire systems:

• In schools, where creative programs are cut first, leaving students without spaces to process what’s happening inside them.

• In workplaces, where people perform and push through, with no room to be fully human inside systems that reward burnout.

• In healthcare, where grief, trauma, and the emotional weight of illness sit in families and patients with nowhere safe to land.

• In military and veteran communities, where unspoken experiences stack up long after service has ended.

• In Black, Brown, and marginalized communities, where systemic inequities have stolen access to safe, culturally-rooted healing spaces for generations.

• In families, where parents raise children while still carrying emotional weight that no one ever helped them put down.