There’s the version of me you see in the crown and then there’s the version in my below Vlog.
This episode of Behind the Crown was filmed before and after one of my therapy sessions because I wanted to show something we don’t talk about enough: healing isn’t always pretty.
Sometimes therapy means walking into a room knowing you’re about to open doors you’ve spent years trying to keep closed. I once described it to my therapist like a big warehouse, filled with racks, filled with thousands of little boxes going back as far as the eye can see, filled with all my trauma. Over the years I’ve slowly started taking those boxes down and unpacking them. Sometimes I leave feeling lighter. Sometimes I leave exhausted, emotional, and looking nothing like the polished version of myself I see in pageant photos.
And that’s okay.
I share my story because I never want someone struggling with their mental health to look at the woman in the crown and assume she has everything figured out.
I don’t.
I still go to therapy. I still do the work. I still have hard days when I have to sit in my driveway until I can pull it together enough to go inside, unburdened, to my family.
Winning my crown didn’t erase my story. It gave me another platform to tell it.
This is what healing can look like behind the crown.
From the scars on my arms to the crown on my head—turning a lifetime of trauma into service.
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