Day 1

Here I am, sitting and wondering—
What is this all about?
Who am I in this vast, beautiful space?

It’s as if I’m being called to something,
but I can’t quite hear who’s speaking.
Is it my own thoughts?
Is it my own voice,
desperately trying to connect?

I have no idea what I’m doing anymore,
or where this life is taking me.
It feels like I’m being broken apart,
piece by piece—
and slowly remade.

They call this kintsugi:
the art of repairing broken pottery
by mending the cracks with gold.
Is that what’s happening to me?

Am I being mended with gold—
stitched back together
as the real me?

We all become broken over time.
Old things fall away,
no longer meant for the path we’re on.
And so, we mend what’s broken
with new versions of ourselves.

This is the human tapestry we weave.
At the core,
we are threads—
woven together by experience,
tied by change,
held by growth.

Yesterday, I did something unexpected—
but it felt right.

As part of my yoga teacher training,
we were asked to present a soul project.
At first, I thought I’d talk about bees.
But it didn’t sit right.
Then I thought, maybe massage—
I could teach and offer mini sessions.
Still, it didn’t feel true.

So I sat with it.
What does my soul really want?

A week before the project was due,
the idea hit me:
to write
and to speak—
to stand in front of the class
and share my truth.

I spent hours writing,
letting the words flow through me.
Editing. Re-reading. Feeling.
Searching for what I truly wanted to say.

And finally,
I found it.
It was my truth.

And I would like to share it with you.

Soul project

I know all of you must be thinking Hope’s soul project must be associated with massage. That’s what she said she would do.

But no. That’s not my passion.

Touching people is what I do for work—and I’m tired of it being my identity. I’m tired of everyone believing that’s what I’m here to do.

So for my soul project today, I’m going to read my writing.

Everything I’ve done outside of myself has always been to please others—for my ego. It’s been to gain approval, validation, or to feel that I mattered. But as I’ve done the work on myself over the years, I’ve desired less and less from others. I went from someone desperate to belong somewhere to now craving to be myself and doing what I love. I desire to speak what is unsaid, of writing down stories from my imagination or my own experiences. 

I  created this life, from every choice I’ve made. I kept up this act. Kept pretending and the better and easier massage became, the less I cared. Yet people would applaud. They would keep telling me who I was—
“That you’re the best.”
“That you can’t ever give this up because your hands are magic.”

And yet—I felt more and more disconnected from it.

The more I healed, the more I saw the truth.

Massage was a way to get approval from my family. It was my way of healing others—but mostly, it was a way to avoid being truthful with myself.

But,

Massage taught me what touch truly means.
It’s not just contact.
It’s not just skin or bones.
It’s not just fascia, or blood, or cells.

It’s seeing into another.

It’s emotion.
It’s feeling what’s not being said.
It’s understanding the obstacles through fingertips.
It’s knowing.

And as I grew deeper into understanding this knowing, I saw myself yearning for more. Underneath all the massage was a desperate want to connect. The connection I had lacked due to a dysfunctional family of being outcasted, was why massage became my instrument. It became my mode of self expression. and as I changed I connected more and more with myself.

And it took work to learn. It took messing up. It took intention and humility. It took me time to realize that by touching others, I was mending what was broken inside of me.

The evolution of myself and my massage practice mirrored my own journey through the darkness. You could see it in my face, my decor, my being, how plagued I truly was. And as I continued to heal it brought that scared and angry little girl to a place of surrender and peace.
She was the stuff of trauma and brokenness.
She was me and she was brave.

And though the journey was hard—it was necessary to go through. I am grateful for it.

The first time I really saw the shifting of my soul was when I started writing a blog every day for a year. That blog eventually became the name of my company—because it was me, coming to terms with the fact that I wasn’t accountable, I had poor habits, and my mind wasn’t firm. I used to jump from one thing to the next—but when I wrote, I spoke to myself. I reflected on what I had lived through and what I wanted to become.

After that year of writing, I started recording videos every day for another year, right after a devastating breakup. I wanted to discover who I was and what my calling really was.

All the while, I kept feeding the ego by continuing to do massage and trying to grow the business. But with it came resistance. Square pegs forced into round holes.

And after that year of tiktoks, I found myself right back at square one.
Who was I?
What did I want?
Where was my joy, my wonder, my play?

Since then, I’ve been stuck on this idea that I need to do more.
Learn more.
Be better.
Keep striving.

But I wasn’t expanding—I was spinning. I was a slave to the grind.

And this year? This year I burned out trying to force the river to change direction.

So I went inward. And I found that in the stillness… I was already in the peace I’d been chasing.

This year, I decided to put everything I had into changing myself.
To letting, rather than doing.
To being, rather than forcing.

I began the year doing neurofeedback, which shifted the compulsive spiral of my thoughts and helped me move from rumination to transmutation.

I dove into new learning and growth, and all of it has brought me to this moment—right now—where I understand I know absolutely nothing.

I have no idea where I’m going.
And all I can do is surrender.

Because when I look at something, I try to solve it. Fix it. Direct it. Name it. Control it.
But that creates expectation. Not acceptance.

So that’s what this is about.
Allowing my heart to open.
Allowing my words to guide me.
Leaping without a net.
Letting them think what they want—and letting me be who I am.

I’m challenging what I was taught success should look like and stepping into a world of my own making.

A world that’s raw. Vulnerable. Alive.
One where I can help others see that we get to choose our level of involvement in our life.

And I’m ready.
To speak.
To be seen.
To stand in front of others and say:

It’s never too late to change your world. It’ never too late to be honest with yourself and start something new.

The reason I’m sharing all of this with you today… is because I’m finally ready to live in my satya—my truth, my enoughness. I’m ready to speak not from a place of proving or performing, but from peace.

And I don’t want to just say that—I want to live it.

So, I’m inviting you to join me. Right here, right now, as you are.

I’m going to ask each of you to take a moment and reflect on this simple sentence:
‘The truth I’m ready to tell is…’

You don’t have to share the whole story. Just a piece of it. A breath of it.
It might be something small, or something that’s been pressing on your chest for years. There’s no wrong answer.

If you feel comfortable, I’d love for you to share it out loud. Or write it down. Or just speak it silently to yourself—but speak it with your whole heart.

Let this be a space where we practice not just listening to others, but listening to ourselves.

So again, when you’re ready:
‘The truth I’m ready to tell is…’

During this telling, I began to cry.

The emotion of it brought me to a place
I’ve always longed to reach—
a space where I could share my story
in hopes that even a small piece of it
might help someone else
shift, heal, or awaken.

I wasn’t born to touch others physically—
yet it became my profession.

But maybe I was born to touch people’s souls.
To help transmute their pain and doubt
into something lighter—
into hope.

Maybe my dad named me right after all.

I’ve spent so much of my life
fighting to be perfect,
desperate for people to like me,
to approve of what I say and who I am.

But all that striving—
it only broke me.
It shattered my soul
into a million tiny pieces.

And so here I am,
practicing kintsugi—
carefully putting myself back together,
piece by golden piece.

It may not be perfect.
It may not be pretty.
But it is me.
In my rawest, truest form.

I’m choosing to write again.
To allow whatever wants to come through,
to simply… come.

I didn’t endure all my trauma
just to stay silent—
to hide behind massage
and call it a life.

I went through it
so I could transform.
So I could become
something entirely new—
a butterfly, not despite the pain,
but because of it.

So I’m taking back D2H Wellness.
It was always my way of claiming something deeper.
Originally it stood for Dare to Habit…

But now?

I think it stands for Dare to Hope.

Yes.
I like that.