I didn’t realize until recently that my tattoos tell one continuous story. To me they were just always little marks that I had dreamed about since I was a child. It didn’t matter to me that my family was very anti-tattoo. I could see the art and weight each strike of ink carried. And I knew that I was going to at least have seven of them. Each tattoo meaning something specific. Each one chosen with intention.

I got my first one at eighteen — impulsive, maybe, but also the most honest thing I had ever
done. It was the tattoo I knew I wanted the most. Over the years, more followed. Each one felt separate at the time: a checklist item here, a symbol there, words pressed into skin because I needed them close. But when I look at them together now, I see something I didn’t plan. I see a map of the person I was fighting to become. All before I even was old enough to put all of that together.

In Perpetuum et Unum Diem — ribcage

Forever and one day. I was eighteen when I got this, and somehow I already knew. We carry things with us. The grief, the love, the versions of ourselves we’ve outgrown but haven’t quite let go of. That John Locke may have had a point about us being a sum of our memories.

This Latin phrase lives on my ribcage — close to my lungs, close to my breath — because the things that matter don’t leave us. They just change shape. Learning to carry them gently is its own kind of strength. Learning to live with them is how you end up fulfilled.

Second Star to the Right — behind my ear

Peter Pan. A movie that on its own I am actually not a huge lover of. However, it had one symbol so prominently perfect that I thought I must have it — in my own style. Behind my ear, small enough to be a secret, meaningful enough to be permanent.

This one is a promise I made to myself: to never let the world fully harden me. To hold onto wonder, play and childish imagination. To protect the part of me that still believes in magic, still finds joy in small things, still remembers the dragon on her childhood bedroom wall and wanted to fly.

The world will try to take that from you. Growing up is often just a slow, polite way of being told your softness and wonder is inconvenient. This tattoo is my refusal to submit to a reality where we forget to giggle.

Semicolon — wrist

You already know what this one means. A semicolon is used when a sentence could have ended, but didn’t. The author chose to continue. I chose to continue. That’s all I’ll say about that — and it’s everything. Because I want to remind everyone that no matter how hard things are one thing will always remain true — change. It’s the most real guarantee we can have.

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Jewish Star with Buddhist Ties — ankle

I have never fit neatly into one box. When I was a kid I didn’t fit in well with the Jewish community around me. When I was older I didn’t fit in with other communities well because I was Jewish. It felt like écartèlement. This tattoo is my peace with the idea that fitting into one neat box was never really supposed to be the goal in the first place. The goal was always just finding your own moral character.

My Jewish roots run deep — the culture, the history, the sense of belonging to something ancient and resilient. And Buddhism found me when I needed a framework for the interior life: impermanence, compassion, the practice of presence. These two things coexist in me. This tattoo says: you are allowed to hold more than one truth at a time. Complexity is not contradiction. It’s just being whole.

Milton Quote — arm

“Long is the way and hard, that out of Hell leads up to light.” — John
Milton, Paradise Lost

This one is the one people ask about most. And the answer is simple: I put it on my arm because I needed to be able to see it. I have been through my own hell. I pulled myself out of it — slowly, imperfectly, with a lot of help and a lot of stubbornness. And there are so many times when I feel like I am literally back in the swamp.

So when it came time for me to finally get the John Milton tattoo I always wanted I switched lanes. I didn’t go for the romance and poetry. I went for the visual reminder I can always see for myself. The way is long. The way is hard. But there is light at the end, and you are already moving toward it.

—

Gentle Strength was never just a name. It’s the thing I’ve been practicing my whole life — learning to be soft and strong at the same time, to survive without becoming hard, to carry my story without being crushed by it.

These tattoos are the proof that I’ve been working on it for a long time. And I’m still working on it. That’s the whole point.

Gentle Strength

I built this space because I needed it to exist, and it didn’t yet. Simple as that. Complicated as that.

I’ve rewritten this opening a few times now. The first version was too formal — it sounded like a
LinkedIn bio that had developed feelings. The next was too casual, the kind of breezy ‘hey babes!’ energy that makes me cringe a little even when other people do it. Especially, when I’m forcing myself to write like that. The third got philosophical way too fast. You don’t need Nietzsche in the first paragraph. Probably. At least that’s what they tell me.

So here’s the truth: I built this space because I needed it to exist, and it didn’t yet. Simple as that. Complicated as that.

That phrase has lived in my head for a long time before it became a brand. It came from noticing something in myself — that the times I felt most powerful weren’t the times I was hard, or loud, or armored up. They were the times I stayed soft on purpose. Chose to stay open when closing would have been easier. Kept going without becoming someone I didn’t recognize or returned just from the edge of about to be lost for good.

That’s gentle strength. It’s not passive. It’s actually one of the harder things I know how to do.

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Honestly? A lot of things. Which I know is not the clean elevator pitch you’re supposed to lead with. But I am a lot of things, and I’ve spent enough time trying to fit into one neat category to know it doesn’t work for me.

Here you’ll find writing — fan fiction, poetry, original work, all of it unapologetically. You’ll find wellness content rooted in functional medicine and the deeply personal journey of figuring out what actually helps your specific, complicated, beautiful body and brain. You’ll find my charity work, the causes I lose sleep over, the ways I try to show up for my community. You’ll find modeling and media, creative projects, tabletop gaming, a newsletter, and eventually a shop and a YouTube channel because apparently I contain multitudes and I’ve stopped apologizing for it.

What ties it together is the philosophy. Everything here is an attempt to live gently and strongly at the same time.

I’m a writer, a model, a community advocate, a chronic overthinker, and a person who has been through some things and came out the other side still fundamentally myself — which feels like the greatest achievement of my life so far. I’m Jewish and Buddhist, which confuses people at first and makes complete sense once you know me. I have tattoos that tell a story I’ll share with you soon. I care deeply, sometimes too much, and I’ve learned to treat that as a feature rather than a bug.

Because there’s never a perfect time and I got tired of waiting for one. Because I kept having conversations — online, in person, in my own head at 3 in the morning — where I thought: this should be somewhere. I should be somewhere. So here I am. Here we are.

I don’t have everything figured out. This site will grow and shift as I do. Some posts will be polished. Some will be raw. All of them will be honest. Because I can tell you as someone who once hit the bottom — honesty is something you can always carry with you and hold close.

If you found your way here because something about the words ‘gentle strength’ felt like something you needed — welcome. You’re in the right place. Pull up a chair. I’m really glad you’re here. We can share tales by the imaginary fire, trade recipes, sing really badly or just kiki.

Visual Storytelling In Ink

Gentle Strength