My Story
The Woman Behind the Work
I grew up watching my mother love people with everything she had. She was generous, faithful, and full of life. She was also gone by the time she was 43. Breast cancer. I was young. I watched everything. And I made a quiet decision that I was not going to repeat that story.
What I did not know then was that the same disease would one day come for me too. Stage 0. Two lumpectomies. Twenty one rounds of radiation. A salpingectomy and oophorectomy. I sat in those treatment rooms and thought about my mother. I thought about Ethan. I thought about every woman who needed to hear that you could go through the hardest thing of your life and still come out standing on the other side with your arms raised.
"Cancer tried to take my body. Divorce tried to take my identity. Single motherhood tried to take my energy. Faith held me through all three."
Before the diagnosis, before the businesses, before any of this, there was New York. There was hustle. There was a woman figuring out who she was in a city that does not slow down for anyone. Two marriages. The hardest one taught me that control and isolation dressed up as love is still a cage. Walking away from something that looked perfect to everyone else was one of the bravest things I have ever done. Two cities. Two complete reinventions. I moved to Tampa. Life pulled me back to New York. Then I rebuilt in Tampa again. Every time I came back, I came back sharper.
In 2017 I lost 40 pounds through Herbalife. That was not just a physical transformation. It was the first time I chose myself on purpose. That moment became the seed of everything Strive Strong would grow into. Nutrition. Fitness. Empowerment. Faith. Four pillars. One complete system for women who are ready to rebuild from the inside out.
I have opened five businesses. Urban Nutrition Spot in the Bronx. NYC Next Level Nutrition. Nourish Tampa. CoBlend. And now Strive Strong Creative Studio in Tampa. Every single one was built from lived experience. Not borrowed playbooks. Not trends. Real life, turned into a system that serves real women.
And then there is Ethan. My son. Sixteen years old. Future lawyer. Mock Trial. Baseball. Stanford Law and Trial program. Everything I build, I build so he can watch what faith in action actually looks like. Not the kind of faith that removes hard things. The kind that walks through them with you and keeps you standing on the other side.
"Every morning call. Every prayer. Every devotional word written at 5AM while the house was quiet. This is where I go to remember who I am when life tries to tell me otherwise."
This is not a highlight reel. This is the whole tree. Five branches. One root. And that root has never moved.
