I’m a writer, artist, and music lover navigating the world with limited sight and deep vision.
I began creating art as a child, often believing I had to “suffer” for what I made — as if beauty could only be born from pain. That belief followed me for years, influencing choices I now understand were quiet cries for meaning. But I’ve learned that creation doesn’t require suffering — only honesty.

At 30, I was diagnosed with Retinitis Pigmentosa — part of a rare genetic condition called Usher Syndrome, which causes progressive vision and hearing loss. The doctor said, “You could slowly lose your sight over twenty years… or wake up blind tomorrow.”

I had already lived with hearing impairment for most of my life, but facing blindness was a whole new kind of reckoning. The news suffocated me. For years, I lived with the fear that each morning might be the last one I’d ever see.

But a single question from a friend changed everything:
“What if you do wake up blind?”

Usher Syndrome dims both sight and sound — but it’s also sharpened something deeper in me: a kind of inner listening. A different way of seeing. A hunger for beauty I might have missed otherwise.

While I’ve lost pieces of how I once experienced the world, I’ve gained a sensitivity to what can’t always be seen or heard — only felt.

That question — simple but piercing — gave me permission to stop fearing the worst and start preparing to live fully with whatever vision I still had.

I began to notice beauty more intimately: the way sunlight moved through a window… the way a voice softened when it spoke the truth.

That shift — from fear to presence — shaped not only how I see the world, but how I write about it.

The Gravity of Grief & Joy is my first book, a memoir written in essays and song. It reflects the paradox of surrender and resilience, of holding sorrow and beauty in the same breath.

I believe art and words can hold what the heart can’t always say.

And I believe that while I may be losing sight — I’m not losing vision.