Founder's Story

THE IDENTITY I DIDN'T CHOOSE

A Truth That Changed Everything

For much of my life, I was the woman who could figure everything out. I was independent. Resourceful. Determined.

I knew how to navigate uncertainty, overcome obstacles, and keep moving forward regardless of the circumstances. And for a long time, I considered those qualities my greatest strengths. They were. But they came at a cost.

When I was a preteen, I discovered something about my family that fundamentally changed my understanding of who I was.

The people I had always known as my mother and father were actually my grandparents. My biological mother was the woman I had grown up knowing as someone else in my family. Everyone seemed to know the truth except me.

I learned this unexpectedly, during an argument with my younger sister. In a moment, the story I understood about my life changed. I felt confused, frightened, hurt, and betrayed. But I also remember being concerned about everyone else's feelings.

I worried about my sister getting into trouble. I worried about the woman who had raised me and whether she would still feel like my mother. I worried about my biological mother and the pain surrounding her experience.

That was a lot for a young girl to process. Much of it went unaddressed, and shortly afterwards I found myself a rebellious teen, kicked out of the house, living out of a car, and trying to navigate a new reality.

Looking back, I recognize that this experience profoundly influenced how I learned to navigate the world. I became fiercely independent. I learned to rely on myself, protect myself, and avoid putting myself in situations where someone else could pull the rug out from underneath me.

That identity helped me survive.

WHEN SURVIVING WAS NO LONGER ENOUGH

Recognizing The Pattern In My Parenting

As I grew older, I navigated homelessness, motherhood, health challenges, relationships, and the demands of building a career. I accomplished things I was proud of. But so much of my success came through persistence, self-reliance, and grit.

Eventually, I grew tired. Not tired of ambition. Not tired of wanting more from life. I was tired of believing that everything meaningful had to come through struggle. But it wasn't until I began recognizing myself in the way I was raising my daughter that I started to understand just how deeply my childhood had shaped the woman I'd become.

I was parenting the teenage version of myself, not my actual daughter.

I wanted my daughter to be strong. Independent. Disciplined. Prepared. I wanted her to understand the importance of hard work, responsibility, and perseverance because I knew firsthand what life could demand of you when you weren't prepared. But one day, I began questioning what I was actually preparing her for.

My daughter wasn't living my childhood. She wasn't navigating the same circumstances, uncertainty, or experiences that had shaped me. Yet I was raising her through the lens of the life I had been thrust into. I was preparing her to survive a world I knew, rather than helping her discover the world she was actually growing up in.

That realization was difficult. Because everything I was doing came from love. I wanted to protect her. I wanted her to be capable of navigating whatever life brought her. But I began to recognize that some of what I considered good parenting was also an extension of my own survival identity.

I was teaching my daughter how to survive circumstances that belonged to my past, not necessarily her future.

And that made me confront a larger question. If the identity I developed as a child was still influencing how I parented my daughter, where else was it shaping my life? My career? My relationships? The opportunities I pursued? The things I believed I deserved?

I began to see how often I approached life from a position of protection rather than possibility. I had become exceptionally good at surviving. But I wanted something different for my daughter. And I realized I wanted something different for myself, too. I didn't want to pass down the belief that life had to be difficult to be meaningful, or that independence meant carrying everything alone.

I wanted my daughter to see a woman who was ambitious without being consumed by struggle.

A woman who could work hard and still experience ease. A woman who could love, trust, receive support, and pursue opportunities without constantly preparing for disappointment. And I understood that if I wanted to model that life for her, I had to begin living it myself.

That was one of the moments that made me decide to change my identity.

Not because the woman I had become was wrong.

But because the woman I had become was no longer the only woman I wanted to be.

BECOMING SOMEONE NEW

A Different Way of Living

I began exploring identity, human behavior, mental rehearsal, and the relationship between our beliefs and actions.

My academic background in exercise science and motor learning had already given me an appreciation for how behavior develops through learning and practice. Now I was interested in applying that curiosity to my own life.

I started asking different questions.

Who had I learned to become?

Which parts of that identity were still serving me?

And who would I need to become to experience the life I actually wanted?

Then I made a conscious decision. I no longer wanted to be the woman who had to survive everything. I wanted to become a woman who could experience success, love, opportunity, and ease without believing she had to struggle for all of it.

So I began imagining and studying her. How would she think? What opportunities would she pursue? What would she allow herself to experience? How would she behave?

And then I began taking small steps towards her. At first, I didn't feel transformed. I felt like the old version of myself taking the actions of the woman I wanted to become.

But I kept practicing. And those small actions began to change how I experienced my life.

It didn't happen overnight. It happened one decision, one action, one experience at a time.

WHAT CHANGED WHEN I STARTED LIVING DIFFERENTLY

CAREER -Expanding What I Believed Was Available

For years, I would see senior-level positions with compensation significantly higher than what I was earning and assume they weren't for me. I would disqualify myself before anyone else had the opportunity to consider me.

So I began doing something different. I applied anyway. I allowed myself to pursue roles that aligned with the woman I was becoming, even when the old version of me questioned whether I belonged.

I also prepared. I studied. I invested time and energy in becoming ready for the opportunities I was pursuing. My daughter watched me wake up early each morning to study for one of those roles.

Eventually, I secured a senior leadership position at a Fortune 100 company, and more than doubled my salary. I hadn't suddenly acquired an entirely different professional background. I had years of education, leadership experience, and accomplishments behind me.

What changed was my willingness to pursue opportunities I had previously placed outside my reach.

I was taking actions as the woman I wanted to become.

RELATIONSHIPS -Allowing Myself To Receive Love

For much of my life, independence had felt safer than vulnerability. I knew how to take care of myself. What I was less practiced at was allowing someone else to care for me.

As I began imagining a different kind of life, I started challenging the assumptions that shaped my dating experiences. I became willing to enter spaces I previously would have avoided, connect with people I might once have considered "not my type," and remain open to the possibility of a loving, supportive relationship.

I also began approaching connection differently. I wasn't looking for someone to rescue me or complete me. I was learning that being capable of taking care of myself didn't mean I had to do everything alone.

Today, I experience a loving, devoted partnership that allows me to feel supported while remaining fully myself.

That kind of emotional ease was something I had wanted, but hadn't always known how to welcome into my life.

MOTHERHOOD -Parenting The Girl In Front of Me

One of the most meaningful changes was how I began showing up as a mother.

As I practiced living from a different identity, I began approaching my daughter with greater awareness of the distinction between her experiences and my own. I could still teach her discipline, responsibility, independence, and the value of hard work. But I no longer needed to approach those lessons as preparation for inevitable hardship. I could make more room for encouragement, exploration, trust, and nurturing.

I could support her in becoming the person she wanted to be, rather than unconsciously preparing her to become the person I had needed to be. And perhaps most importantly, I could show her another way to live.

I still want my daughter to understand the importance of resilience. But I also want her to know that resilience doesn't have to be the foundation of her identity.

She can be capable without having to do everything alone. She can be ambitious without believing success must come through struggle. She can be loved and supported without feeling she has to earn it through hardship. And she can choose who she wants to become without being confined by the experiences that shaped the people who raised her.

My identity work began, in part, because I wanted to parent differently. What I didn't fully anticipate was how much becoming a different version of myself would change what I could model for my daughter.

WHY I CREATED A GIRL IS DOPE™

A Framework For What's Possible

These changes didn't happen because I woke up one morning and suddenly believed I was a different woman.

They happened through a series of decisions and behaviors that gradually became familiar.

At first, the actions required audacity. Then they began to feel possible. Eventually, many of them simply felt logical.

I had been practicing being the woman I wanted to become, and over time, I began recognizing myself as her.

That experience became part of the foundation of A GIRL IS DOPE.

At its heart is a simple belief:

Who you become is shaped by what you experience.

I discovered that I could become the woman I wanted to be by making different choices, taking new actions, and allowing myself to experience more of life.

That discovery inspired the D.O.P.E. Framework—a way for women who want to explore who they're becoming more intentionally.

Decide. Own. Practice. Experience.

WHAT ABOUT THE WOMAN YOU WANT TO BECOME?

Maybe you've spent years being the person everyone can depend on.

Maybe you've accomplished things you're proud of, but still find yourself questioning what's possible for you.

Or maybe you've simply reached a point where the life you've built no longer reflects everything you want to experience.

You don't have to abandon the woman who got you here. But you can decide who you want to become next.

You can begin taking her actions before you fully believe you're her. And you can discover, through practice and experience, that a different way of living is possible.

That's why I created A GIRL IS DOPE.

Not to tell women who they should become, but to encourage them to explore what's possible.

Because sometimes discovering more of life is how we discover more of ourselves.

Discover What's Possible.

Begin Here

I Learned How to Survive

Then I Had to Learn How to Live