07/02/2026
Twenty-three years ago today, on July 2, 2003, I watched a plume of black smoke rise into the sky, feeling heartbreak for whoever’s life had just changed forever. Minutes later, I learned it was mine.
Just a year and a half earlier, my father had died. At fifteen years old, I became what I sometimes jokingly call “the first homeless Miss Nevada.” But behind the joke was profound grief, trauma, uncertainty, and seasons where I wasn’t sure I wanted to keep going.
Today, twenty-three years later, I find myself reflecting not only on what was lost, but on what was built because I survived.
Ten years after that fire, I founded Sierra Sunrise Wellness Group with the belief that “In every new day, there comes another sunrise of potential for a life well-lived.” This year, our practice is thirteen years old, almost the same age I was when my life turned upside down and forever changed.
I share this because hope isn’t born when life is easy. Hope is born when we endure what we never imagined we could survive and, somehow, discover that joy, meaning, and purpose are still possible. I am deeply grateful to every person who walked beside me, because healing was never something I did alone.
If you are carrying grief, trauma, anxiety, depression, or simply the weight of life, please know this: don’t give up. The version of you who is fighting today may one day become the reason you believe healing is possible and can offer your own story to another to pay forward the light of hope in what can sometimes feel like a very bleak, dark world.
At Sierra Sunrise Wellness Group, we are honored to walk alongside people through some of the hardest seasons of their lives. You don’t have to do it alone. ❤️
