The Art of Self Creation

I led a Manager Retreat for Orcas Island Market in the San Juan Islands in January 2024. It snowed 8 inches that day. It was so much fun!

October 30, 2025

I wrote this in July and shared it on Facebook, but never saved it here.

It remains one of my favorite things I’ve ever written.

These past six months have taken me through shock, grief, and the long unraveling of betrayal—into the difficult work of integrating truth, recalibrating my nervous system to stop mistaking hope for harm, reclaiming my story, and shaping the next version of myself.

I know the woman I’ll be in ten years will thank me for the work I’m doing now.

I am deeply, wildly proud of myself, and I never want to live through anything like this again.

I hope no one else ever has to, either.

Love ~ Katherine

The Art of Self-Creation

I was not handed wholeness.

I did not stumble upon it

in a sunrise or a book or a man’s gaze.

I did not find myself

already-formed

waiting beneath the wreckage.

I built her.

From pieces I almost threw away.

From truths I once ran from.

From the echo of a voice

I hadn’t yet learned to trust—my own.

I wasn’t born into ease.

But I was enchanted by possibility.

And that was enough.

So I sculpted safety

from boundaries I was told were selfish.

I stitched identity

from scraps of longing and defiance.

I wrote worth into the margins

where others had erased me.

There was no map.

Only a compass that pulsed louder

every time I was truly me.

Every time I wrote myself a love letter

instead of an apology.

Self-creation is not lightning.

It’s firewood and friction.

It’s sitting in the dark long enough

to strike the match.

It’s choosing again—

and again—

to be the author of your own becoming.

I did not find myself.

I made myself.

And she is holy.

Not because she is flawless,

but because she is chosen.

By me.

For me.

Proud of me.