Allow Me To Introduce Myself...
Creating a comforting spot to think and to feel
Why did I create The Uplevel?
A good friend of mine mentioned it to me as something I should explore. Just for fun. To play around with my creative writing. For many months I was at war with myself — how would I come up with regular content?? Then I realized the swirling vortex of internal dialogue and my insatiable curiosity that takes up the emotional real estate in my brain constituted a limitless supply of writing prompts. I only needed to tip them out of my head and onto the screen. It didn’t need to be perfect. I could even keep it anonymous. Huh… suddenly it didn’t seem so intimidating. So consider this an expansive version of a personal journal of sorts and come along for a journey of self discovery. There is no final destination to arrive at where we are well and truly ‘healed’. But I believe the journey should be approached with compassionate curiosity and an openness to new perspectives. To see old memories through new eyes. To view ourselves with a renewed sense of love and appreciation.
Throughout this journey, I have distilled this feeling that everything I will create, whether that is this online journal, screenplays or books, will be for the purpose of helping women to feel seen, to feel understood, and to allow feelings and fears to be expressed into words that they couldn’t find for themselves.
The human experience is full of many wonderful things. But it is also really, fucking hard. To carry around the weight of so many layered and sticky emotions and thoughts and unanswerable questions and hypotheticals. We were given these incredible bodies with such capacity for feeling and thinking — and yet none of us were gifted with a guidebook with how to operate it. I feel like we spend our days stumbling through life in the dark trying to make sense of it all. Trying to make it hurt a little less. Or make the good times last a little longer. And ultimately it can often be a lonely journey. We think we are the only ones feeling lost or stuck or behind. So I wanted to create a little corner of the internet where like-minded kind souls could feel a little less alone.
When I started my own healing journey in October 2021, I felt like I was starting from absolute scratch. I had never done talk therapy, had no clue about what my nervous system was or why I generally felt sad or stuck a lot of the time. I was a bundle of anxious frayed nerves and felt like I wallowing in the shady depths of my existence. I remember lying in bed with tears in my eyes, watching the branches of the trees sway in the breeze, literally watching time pass me by. Time was passing and I was a passive participant in my life. Everyone else seemed to be actively moving forward. Quite honestly it felt terrifying. I felt it in my core: I can’t do this anymore. And for the first time in my life I was able to take some small action that has ultimately spurred me on this path.
In the months that followed, I felt myself slowly unfurling. And since that journey began, I have come to appreciate my ability to consume a lot of information. I have a voracious appetite for knowledge and wisdom — and I like to distill it down to the best, most useful bits. I recognized that not everyone has the time or inclination to be able to do the same. So I created this holistic guide to be a space where I could share the people, concepts, therapists, functional medicine practitioners, astrologists, artists, writers, founders and bright thinkers that have inspired and educated me and brought me comfort during the long dark nights. I hope that in time you come to meet the more connected, more peaceful, truest and highest version of yourself x