I come from a long line of women who knew how to create warmth — at the table, in the body, in the room.

Even before I had language for it, I knew that care and leadership weren’t opposites.

That intuition wasn’t soft. It was sovereign.

My ancestors have long lived in and around Appalachian roots. 

Women from Appalachia have known how to create a sacred way of life in the ordinary and mundane, through shared meals and rituals — creating steadiness in times of difficulty.

They’ve known how to listen to their intuition and ancestral knowing, long before it was trendy and somewhat commercialized. They knew how to listen well, with depth and gentleness, before shaking the room with their own grounded words. They understood that story was inheritance: through writing, presence, oral retellings, and even their own hospitality. 

I later discovered that my ancestral ties include regions like Georgia, West Virginia, and Boston, and that my inclination toward community care, herbalism, sacred living, and nonlinear leadership had deep cultural roots I hadn’t always named — but had always embodied. 

In my blood, I knew that the pace of modern life was a beautiful thing, and a detriment all in one breath, without the sacred rhythms that existed in days of the past. 

My Roots