This is Shedding Damask.

A place for stories about identity, pain, transformation, education, childhood, incarceration, healing, and becoming.

A place for the young person who feels trapped behind a version of themselves they created just to survive.

A place where we ask a difficult question:

Who are you when you finally take off the mask?

My hope is simple:

That my stories will help young people recognize their own worth before they lose themselves trying to survive.

Take off the mask.
Find the person underneath.
Begin again.

Shedding Damask

Some masks protect us.

Some masks imprison us.

I know because I wore one.

Bullying taught me how to hide my pain. Loneliness taught me how to hide my fear. Somewhere along the way, the mask I created to survive became so familiar that I could no longer recognize the person underneath it.

For years, I chased something I couldn't name.

Then I became tired of being tired.

I picked up a book.

I taught myself how to read.
Then I taught myself how to write.

I failed. I tried again. I failed again.

In 2010, I earned my GED.

Then I went looking for more.

College challenged the way I thought. Critical thinking challenged the way I understood myself. Education didn't erase my past, but it gave me new eyes through which to see it.

In 2024, I earned my Associate degree in Liberal Arts. Today, I am working toward my Bachelor's degree in Social Studies, writing my stories, and preparing for the next chapter of my life.

I am also an author.

But more than anything, I am a storyteller who believes that painful stories can become maps for somebody else.