Raised by a French mother and an American father, I grew up in complete creative freedom. We rode our bikes at dusk on overgrown country roads, crossed poppy fields, hiked misty forest trails, played hide-and-seek within the catacombs of medieval castles, and discovered crooked church steeples and weathered headstones scattered throughout the cloudy Normandie landscape.

After school, I raced snails in the backyard, kicked my feet up on our swing over bushes of red currants and slid down our 3-story wooden staircase with my little sister on mattresses, screaming our hearts out. On summer nights, I pushed open my attic bedroom window over a sea of slate rooftops and gasped for hours while swallows swooped right up to me.

I listened to old war stories told at the dinner table as I secretly sipped port wine from my grandmother’s glass. On Saturdays, we walked to the village market where my mother filled paper bags with clementines and black cherries that we feasted on before it could make it to the kitchen counter.

My days were synched to the rhythmic village bell, and upon the 10th toll, late at night while I clutched my red Walkman, stories of Le Petit Prince floated me to sleep.

We packed everything we owned into suitcases and I was thrusted into the sizzling Arizona Desert on the eve of my 16th birthday and my new American life began when I stumbled into High School with an English dictionary in hand and clothes that were too warm for the weather.

This life-shifting experience of starting over in a new country brought along feelings of isolation and culture shock. Thankfully, I wasn’t alone as I sat in my ESL class (English as a Second Language) and discovered a group of quirky humans from all over the globe. We bonded and figured things out as we learned English together.

I quickly traded my cloudy French skies for a landscape of saguaros and fell in love with the desert light.

My quietness gradually morphed into my biggest powers: a keen eye for detail and deep human interest. It became my foundation for what came next. A calling to create and share work that promotes authenticity, mindfulness and connection. A reverence to my childhood, a reminder of where I came from, but also a needed contribution to the world, my community, and everyone.