WHO I AM
Heart First.
Wife. Mom
I am a wife and a mom before I am anything else — before cancer, before scars, before fear, before any diagnosis tried to change my identity.
My family is the root of my strength, the center of my world, and the reason I will keep showing up, no matter how hard this journey gets.
I’ve been married to my husband Casey for 34 amazing years this month, on December 21, 2025.
High school sweethearts.
Best friends first.
Then partners in all the beautiful and brutal pieces of life.
He has always been my rock — steady, patient, calm, funny, stubborn in all the right ways, and the one person who knows how to hold my heart when everything around us feels like it’s falling apart.
There is no “me” without “us.”
We’ve built a whole life together — one full of chaos, love, strength, and a bond most people never get to experience.
Together, we raised four incredible kids.
We gave birth to two and adopted two — two girls and two boys — and every one of them has shaped our family in a way that feels nothing short of divine.
We’ve survived the kind of heartbreak that brings most people to their knees.
Three years ago, we lost our oldest son to cancer.
There are no words for that kind of loss.
It’s the kind of grief that rewires you.
It doesn’t go away — it becomes woven into your bones, into every breath, into the way you love the children who are still here.
And just when we thought we had already survived the hardest test life could give… cancer came for me.
Casey and I have said it so many times, half joking, half praying, half exhausted:
“God… you must think we are superhuman.
How many tests can one family be handed?”
First you took our son.
Now you want to take me?
Absolutely not.
We’ve fought too hard.
We’ve lost too much.
And we are not doing that again.
I am a mother who loves fiercely, who protects fiercely, who grieves fiercely, and who survives fiercely.
I am a wife who leans into her husband’s strength and gives him mine when he needs it.
I am a woman built from equal parts softness and steel.
I am a fighter.
A warrior.
A nurturer.
A giver.
A protector.
A survivor.
The woman who shows up for everyone else — my kids, my coworkers, the kiddos on my school bus, anyone who needs love, truth, or a helping hand.
And now?
Now I am showing up for myself with that same ferocity.
People always say,
“You don’t know how strong you are until you don’t have a choice.”
But I think I’ve always known — because life has never given me any option but strength.
This cancer will not win.
It will not break my family a second time.
I will fight with everything I have — for Casey, for our children, for the child we lost, for the family we built, and for the life I’m still claiming.
This is Who I Am.
A Wife.
A Mother.
A Woman in the Storm — Surviving, Loving, and Rising Again. One Badass Day at a Time.
