From Handcuffs to Healing: A Nurse’s Unlikely Beginning

Before I became a nurse practitioner guiding others back to their wellness, I turned 14 in juvenile hall. No birthday candles. No celebration. Just four cold walls, a metal bunk, and a lingering sense that I was already a lost cause.

I wasn’t a bad kid.

I was a hurting kid.

A child crying out in all the wrong ways because no one had shown me how to express what was really going on inside.

I skipped school.

Hung with the wrong crowd.

Got arrested with a can of Budweiser in my backpack that wasn’t even mine.

And when I needed a lifeline, the system handed me punishment instead.

Fourteen days in juvie. I learned fast to hide my softness. I was handcuffed, stripped of my clothes, and made to squat and cough in a cold room like I was already something to fear.

I remember the lip balm I hid on the frame above the door because we only got it once a week.

I remember the kickball games and the girl who threw the ball at my face just to see me cry. I wasn’t tough. I wasn’t a fighter. But another girl—someone who’d been in longer—pulled me aside after and said, "Don't let them get to you. They're just jealous you get to leave."

That moment cracked something open in me.

I saw what survival looked like.

And even then, I knew something was deeply broken in a world where kids are punished for being in pain.

Years later, becoming a nurse felt like redemption.

I believed that maybe if I wore the scrubs, learned the language, and helped others, I could finally outrun the broken girl inside me.

But what I didn’t expect was that nursing would also crack me open.

I loved the ER. I loved my co-workers. But over time, I realized we weren’t really healing people. We were putting Band-Aids on bullet wounds—sometimes literally.

Addiction, trauma, burnout, chronic illness—these aren't things you fix in five minutes with a script and a smile.

These are deep roots that need tending.

And so I left the system to create something different.

A space where your pain isn’t punished.

Where your past doesn’t disqualify you.

Where we don’t just manage symptoms—we listen to what your body is trying to say.

Because I know what it’s like to feel like you don’t belong.
I know what it’s like to think your story is too messy to matter.

But let me tell you something: your pain is not your identity. It’s the map back to yourself.

I walked that map, handcuffs and all.

And now, I hold the lantern for those still trying to find the way.

If you’re on your own path of healing—messy, nonlinear, and all heart—I see you.

You don’t need to have it all figured out.

You just need to begin.

I’m here when you’re ready.