Small Town Girl, Big City Dreams: The Birth of “xo, Kat’s Corner”

When I was 9 years old, I felt this odd and inexplicable knowing that I was supposed to document my life through written words. I was in the fourth-grade at the time, and nothing out of the ordinary was happening in my life, or so it seemed then. Yet I followed the confusing pull to start writing about my life. Without any money of my own, I asked my mum to buy me a diary, which she happily did, and I wrote in that diary every single day for about a year before getting distracted by having crushes on my older brother’s friends, trying to be a teacher’s pet, and facing the daily dramas of growing up in a home with alcohol abuse.

Writing, for as long as I can remember, has always felt like the easiest way for me to express the true essence of my soul. Almost as if it’s the gateway between the clarity, creativity, and celestial energy that lives deep within me and my ability to share that with the world. Growing up, when teachers would tell me that I needed to change my sentence structures or the way I said things to make it “more professional” or comprehensible to others, it always felt wrong. Like, who are you to tell me that the way I feel most connected to myself needs to be molded for you to better understand me? So I never listened (which, honestly, is a life theme of mine… don’t you dare tell me what to do, because I’ll want to do the opposite just to prove a point). I continued to write, on and off, throughout my upbringing. Sometimes just to communicate with my mum how much I was struggling with our conditions at home. Sometimes to profess my love to boys who never loved me back. Sometimes to purge all of my fears from my body and let them live neatly on lined paper that I’d never have to look at again. Sometimes to escape my reality completely and create alternate universes where there was no alcohol, no fighting, no money scarcity, no problems, just pure bliss.

The reality, though, is that I grew up in a small agricultural town in southwest Colorado. Until I was 11, my mum wasn’t a U.S. citizen, and despite his best efforts to be a solid, honorable, and protective father, my dad was also an alcoholic. Like I mentioned earlier, I thought my life was ordinary until I got older and realized it wasn’t. I realized that most of my friends felt safe at home. That there wasn’t a looming anxiety filling the four walls of their houses every single day. I realized that most of them weren’t scared of their dads after a certain time of day. That there weren’t beer cans lined up on the coffee table like yellow caution tape at a crime scene. I realized their parents didn’t have fights that turned into screaming, police officers being called, threats of divorce, or even worse, threats of deportation. Instead, their families sat at dinner tables, discussing their days. I realized it wasn’t normal to feel responsible for regulating your parents’ emotions or to know that they weren’t actually there to help you regulate yours.

I was bullied a lot growing up. For my weight, for the way I dressed, for just… being different. For being curious, expressive and open in a small town full of people with even smaller minds (not everyone, of course, but definitely the ones who made sure I never forgot I didn’t fit in). I still remember the fourth-grade health fair when the school nurse secretly called my mum to tell her I was “obese.” Every time I stood in the lunch line after that day, I was met with snarky remarks from the lunch ladies saying “ohhh here comes no fruit lady, get the chocolate milk ready!”. Or the time a group of girls from my fifth-grade class would chase me down in “the field” aka our recess grounds, tackled me to the ground, and smeared mashed banana on my face because I couldn’t outrun them. I can still feel the sting of being called a “beached whale” getting out of the pool on a school trip to Denver or being shot with BB guns by my brother’s friends just because they thought it was funny I wasn’t that fast. And I’ll never forget my dad, half-joking, half-serious, saying, “Well, Kit Kat, big girls need love too,” followed by lectures from both him and my mum about how I needed to change the way I ate if I didn’t want to end up like another gal who was just a few years older than me who was severely overweight.

Little me with her goat, Mikey! I used to raise goats growing up, but that’s a story for another day.

I dreamed day in and day out about leaving my hometown for good. When I was a freshman in high school, my mum took my brother and me to New York City for the first time. We went to meet up with her brother, his wife, and my four cousins who all lived in England to celebrate my cousin Logan’s 18th birthday. That same inexplicable feeling I had about writing, I had about New York City, even before we got to Denver International Airport. From the moment I looked out the airplane window at the twinkling lights of the city, I could feel its enchanting energy. And the minute we were off the plane, in a taxi, and on our way to the brownstone we were staying in, I knew in my heart that I was home. I had never felt so seen, so safe, so held by a place before. I vowed to myself that one day, when I was an adult, I’d be back to live in New York City.

My dream became moving to NYC to open “Kat’s Corner,” a bakery in Manhattan that I would own independently. I envisioned it as a cozy place for pastry lovers and a safe space for those who felt like “home” (aka the place they were born and raised) was never truly home to them.

After that first trip to New York, life got messy. My mind was fragile in ways I didn’t fully understand back then, almost as if I was hitting a breaking point in slow motion. All of the instability, growing up faster than I should have had to, alcohol abuse and just general childhood trauma felt like it all came to a head when I was 16 and there was nowhere I could run. I developed an eating disorder, battled thoughts of ending my life that scared the living shit out of me, and yet was an expert at pretending I was fine. I became whoever people needed me to be… a chameleon, constantly shape-shifting just to feel accepted, but deep down, I had no idea who I actually was.

Half the time, I felt crushed under the weight of my own insecurities. The other half, I was performing happiness so convincingly that even I couldn’t tell what was real anymore. But even in the darkest moments, there was this quiet part of me that knew. It was like my soul was screaming that something bigger existed for me; that there was more to this life than just surviving. And honestly, that was the hardest part. Because my soul knew there was more awaiting me on the other side of high school and living with my parents, but my mind couldn’t see a way out. I’d spiral into worst-case scenarios, convincing myself maybe life would never actually get better.

I numbed out however I could. I stayed with friends, avoided being home, buried myself in music. One Direction, Taylor Swift and making art became my escape. When I got bullied by older girls at school, I used to blast “Mean” by Taylor Swift and sing “one day I’ll be living in a big ol’ city and all you’re ever gonna be is mean.” It felt like a promise I was making to myself… that one day I’d be free, that I’d be there in a big ol’ city. The fact that I live in Manhattan now while one of those same bullies still lives in my hometown honestly makes me laugh every time.

When high school ended and everyone went off to college, I just couldn’t. The idea of getting a degree when I had no clue who I was or what I wanted to do felt ludicrous. But eventually, the pressure from friends’ parents and community members that I respected got to me. So I went, not because I wanted to, but because it felt like the next “right” thing to do. It was in my first semester of school that I met my first love.

At the age of 19, I met, fell in love with, and lost my first love, all within the span of eight months. Prior to meeting him, writing had taken a backseat because partying, drinking, and trying to find my worth in the bedsheets of men who made me feel special had taken center stage. But in the aftermath of being broken up with by the man I thought would one day be the father of my children, I started my first blog, Kat’s Bits & Pieces. I named it that because, through each post, I was trying to mend the bits and pieces of my broken heart to reclaim and figure out the whole human I was. It helped a lot. Writing healed me in ways that nothing else could, and it seemed to help others too (at one point, the blog had over 100K monthly views, which completely blew me away). But inevitably, drinking, partying, and trying to find my self-worth in the sheets of other men won out over writing again, and I stepped away from my blog just as it was starting to gain traction.

Since then, I’ve been on one hell of a ride, one you’ll hear lots about through the blog posts I share here, as well as on my other social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram. I dropped out of university. I managed restaurants. I drank a ton of cheap wine and margaritas. I moved across state lines in hopes of starting over. I grappled with hopelessness and suicidal ideation. I hit rock bottom. I was forced to face the childhood trauma and darkness I’d been running from for years. I fell in love two more times, once with a woman and once with a man (somehow they both had the same birthday and are both now blocked, lol oops). I started my own company. I moved to New York City. I quit drinking. I found friends who have shown me unconditional love and support. I healed from my past and forgave my parents for everything that happened growing up. I became buddies with God (but not in the organized religion way, more like recognizing the undeniable guiding force that seems to hang out with me at all times). I laughed, cried, screamed, smiled, danced, and prayed down on my knees for God to give me a fucking break. And on the other side of all that, and so much more, I’ve built myself, brick by brick, layer by layer, moment by moment, into a woman I once only dreamed of being.

And the one thing that has stayed consistent throughout the last ten years of my life is the knowing that I’m meant to share my story, my life, and my experiences through my writing. From the deep, inexplicable feeling I had when I was nine, to a what-the-actual-fuck-just-happened moment mid-meditation when I genuinely heard the voice of God say, “Write about your life as if it was a movie,” this is where my soul, my intuition, my inner guidance system, or whatever you want to call it, has been trying to lead me all along no matter how many times I tried to turn it down or ignore it. If I could tell you the number of psychics, tarot readers, Akashic record keepers, and other mystical muses who’ve told me, quite literally verbatim, “Writing is your soul’s gift and your soul’s mission,” you’d be like, “Well, shit Kat, why didn’t you start this sooner?” And to be completely honest, the answer is that this is the most vulnerable, most real, most authentic part of me.

Over the past six years, I have successfully built, launched, and scaled a life coaching business that has given me the honor of working with hundreds of women around the world to address their core wounds, heal from the past, and finally pursue the life of their dreams. I wouldn’t be where I am today, standing firmly on my own two feet and sharing my story, if it weren’t for that business. Building it didn’t just allow me to move from Colorado to New York City; it gave me the gift of stability, self-trust, and the means to create a life I once only imagined. But more than anything, it reminded me that my truest power and deepest dream have always lived in my words. The dream of being a writer. The dream of inspiring people not by teaching them “how to” do what I’ve done, but simply by being. By sharing. By letting the world in on the inner workings of my heart and mind. The dream of keeping every promise I made to the younger version of myself, because damn, that girl knew she was in store for one epic life.

I never opened a bakery. But I found “Kat’s Corner” was never a storefront, but instead a space within me. A corner of my soul that has always existed; the one that welcomes people in to be seen for more than who they are on the surface, the one that offers truth instead of sugary treats, and serves up the kind of nourishment that could never come from food.

In this very moment I am sat in the nook of my oversized, white, cozy couch, writing these words while looking out over the corner of two intersecting streets in Chelsea, Manhattan. My apartment of the last 3 years sits right here on this very corner, and I realize the prophecy has already been fulfilled, just not in the way I expected.

There’s this really cute and also cliché quote that says, “if it’s your calling, it will keep calling” and to be completely honest this time, I’m ready to answer that call.

This space, xo, kat’s corner, is my love letter. To the 14-year-old girl who dreamed of leaving her hometown forever. To the city that’s shaped me in more ways than I could have ever imagined. To the woman I’m becoming, who is finally ready to live from her “soul’s gift” instead of running from it. And to the art of life itself… the magic, the mess, the divinity of it all.

If you choose to stick around and hang out, this is what you can expect from me: genuine storytelling, reflection, and words that maybe just maybe will also meet you exactly where you are. A space for no bullshit honesty, for healing, for connection, for dreaming big, for trying new things, for being silly, for being a human-fucking-being. A space where all sides of life are actually genuinely appreciated. Not just the “pretty” moments, but the real ones that kinda make you question everything.

Welcome to my corner of the internet… Kat’s Corner, that is.

The door is always open.

xo, Kat