10/15/2026
I wish I could go back and tell this little girl what her life would become. But I don’t think I’d tell her everything.
Because in this picture, she’s wearing the very dress she wore in one of the last photographs ever taken with her daddy. She would lose him shortly after turning four years old.
And that would be just the beginning of a life that would ask her to be strong long before she understood what strength really meant.
She would grow up. Fall in love. Watch her husband leave for war while she was still in college, trying to build a future. She would spend years studying, pushing through school, earning a doctorate, and eventually putting on a military uniform herself to help pay for the education she’d worked so hard to earn.
And somewhere along the way, she would discover that she was capable of things she’d never even thought to dream about.
Including building a business of her own.
Sometimes people look at my life today and tell me how lucky I am.
And I am lucky. In so many beautiful ways.
But there’s a whole lot of life between that little girl and the woman standing beside her.
Years of sacrifice. Tears nobody saw. Decisions that weren’t easy. Hard work that didn’t come with applause. Doors that didn’t open until I pushed them open myself.
I didn’t have some perfectly mapped-out plan. I didn’t grow up knowing I’d own a business or create a life that looks anything like the one I have today.
I just kept going.
Stubborn? Absolutely.
Hard-headed? Without question.
Persistent? To a fault.
But I never stopped believing there was something more waiting for me, even when I couldn’t quite see what it was.
And the funny thing is, I’m still not finished. Not even close.
I still have dreams that seem a little too big. Ideas that keep me awake at night. Things I want to build, create, and make beautiful.
Because somewhere along the way, I realized I don’t have to settle for the life that’s handed to me. I can create one.
There’s a quote by Elsie de Wolfe that has always spoken to me:
“I’m going to make everything around me beautiful — that will be my life.”
And that’s exactly what I intend to do.
But looking at this picture, I realize something.
For all the things I’ve accomplished, all the places I’ve been, and all the things I’m still determined to do…
I think about that little girl more often than anyone knows.
And I wonder if she’d be proud of the woman I became.
If I could ask her whether I became everything she needed me to be, I imagine she’d look up at me with those big blue eyes and say…
“No. You became something even better.” ❤️
