I Know What It’s Like to Start With Almost Nothing.
If you are standing where I once stood, I want you to know that a different life can be built one step at a time.
WHY RISE SUPPORT EXISTS
I Know What Rebuilding Can Require.
Rise Support grew from something I learned through my own experience: finding the strength to change your life is only the beginning. Rebuilding it often requires information, independence, opportunity, support, and people who help make the next step possible.
There was a time in my life when, from the outside, I seemed to have many of the things that were supposed to make a person feel secure. But inside my marriage, I had become increasingly disconnected from something much more important — my own identity.
My world had become small. I had little financial independence, no real community of my own, and very little understanding of the rights or resources available to me. My English was limited. My family was far away. And I did not yet have the network of friends, knowledge, or confidence that I have today.
I had become dependent in ways that made imagining a different life feel almost impossible.
And then I made a choice that changed the direction of my life.
At a time when we were preparing to move into a beautiful, larger home, the challenges I had been living through brought me to a difficult choice. From the outside, that choice may not have made sense. I walked away from a life that looked secure and stepped into one where I had no idea what would come next.
For a time, that meant choosing a shelter over the security of that home.
It wasn't because I wanted a harder life. It was because I had reached a point where comfort without freedom no longer felt like security to me. I needed the space to rediscover who I was and begin building a life in which I could stand on my own.
A teacher later opened her home to me for a month while I worked toward having a place of my own.
It was not the life I had imagined for myself. But somewhere in that uncertainty, something began to change. For the first time in a long time, I was not only asking how I would survive what came next. I was beginning to ask who I wanted to become.
The rebuilding did not happen quickly. There were months of uncertainty, including an incredibly difficult period separated from my young daughter while I worked through the custody process. I had practical pieces of my life to build from the ground up — a home, transportation, work, financial stability, friendships, and community.
But rebuilding my life also made me begin questioning the life I had known.
I began looking more deeply at the beliefs, expectations, and ideas that had shaped me — about who I was supposed to be, what I was supposed to believe, and what my life was supposed to look like. I started asking different questions: What do I actually believe? What still belongs to me? What am I ready to leave behind? And who do I choose to become from here?
Those questions did not give me immediate answers. But they changed the way I began to see myself and what might be possible.
I wasn't only rebuilding my circumstances. I was rebuilding myself.
- My confidence.
- My independence.
- My voice.
- My sense of possibility.
- My understanding of who I was.
- My belief that I could consciously create a different future.
Years later, when I look at what I have built, I see more than a home, a career, a business, or financial independence. I see a relationship with my daughter that means everything to me. I see friendships and community. I see myself living a life I once could not even imagine — with a level of peace, joy, and freedom I did not know was possible. I see a life that truly feels like my own. And I see a woman who knows herself in a way she once did not.
I am proud of what I have built.
Not because I did it perfectly. And not because I believe becoming ever really ends.
I am proud because there was a time when I could not see the path between the life I was leaving and the life I wanted to create.
I chose to begin anyway.
That experience changed the way I understand what it means for a woman to rise.
Strength matters. But rebuilding a life can require more than strength. It can require information, financial independence, opportunity, community, practical support, and the freedom to make your own choices.
That is why Rise Support is part of Women Rising — to help create more of what can make rebuilding possible.
SUPPORT AVAILABLE TODAY
Start With What You Need Now.
Today, the support I can personally offer is centered in two areas that became important in my own rebuilding: changing what is happening within and building greater practical independence.
REWRITE TO RISEPersonal Transformation
Explore the beliefs and patterns that may be shaping your choices, reconnect with your own voice, and consciously decide what you want to carry forward.
Explore Rewrite to Rise →
BUILD YOUR INDEPENDENCEPractical Independence
Build skills, visibility, business, income, and greater practical independence so you have more freedom to make choices about what comes next.
Build Your Independence →THE VISION AHEAD
Rise Support Is Still Growing.
My longer-term vision for Rise Support is broader: helping connect women who are rebuilding with credible resources, people, and organizations that can support different parts of that journey.
Legal Resources • Housing • Career • Financial Guidance • Community Support
OFFERING SUPPORT
I want to build that responsibly — through the right partnerships, expertise, and trusted resources. If you have knowledge, resources, services, or connections that could help women rebuild and move forward, I would love to hear from you.
Offer SupportLOOKING FOR SUPPORT
The vision is not to have all the answers in one place. It is to make it easier for a woman who is rebuilding to understand where she can begin and where she can turn next.
If you are rebuilding and looking for support, resources, or connection, you can start here.
Find Support