I didn’t stop writing because I ran out of things to say. I stopped because, at some point, my words became useful before they were true. Writing turned into output, clarity into currency, and I learned, quietly and efficiently, how to make language perform. It worked, until it didn’t. Somewhere along the way, the distance between what I was living and what I was willing to name grew too wide. This is not a return fueled by revelation or resolution. It’s a return because the silence has done its work, and I’m ready to listen out loud again.
A Return to the Body, Not the Brand
Over the course of a 25-year career as a writer, editor, photographer, marketer, and activist, I learned quickly that numbers matter. When you’re running a globally syndicated platform reaching more than 100 million readers, pace becomes a mandate. The pressure to perform required constant attention to audience metrics, media partners, and brand expectations. It was a full-time state of vigilance. But this wasn’t how things began.
I started out as a young, wide-eyed journalist who wanted to write about things that mattered. Like most people fresh out of college, I was eager to see the world, to experience it fully, to taste it, to fall in love with it. I worked in radio and television, then at two prominent magazines, before moving to a public relations firm in New York City, where I deepened my craft as a storyteller for design brands. It was 2002, and the world moved more slowly. I could spend an entire afternoon shaping a press release or developing the narrative behind a new collection. It was thoughtful work, and I was good at it. Still, restlessness set in. The desire to write stories from beyond my immediate surroundings began to pull at me. Eventually, I left both the job and the city, spending the next several years teaching while quietly plotting a path toward a career in travel writing.
In 2011, I launched a blog. Within six months, AOL, a media giant at the time, approached us about becoming a content partner. We were invited to their offices, where we signed an advertising and editorial agreement. From there, everything accelerated. Other major media companies followed. Contributors from around the world submitted work. I began receiving invitations to cover destinations across the globe as a travel editor. I was writing about artisans, activists, conservation initiatives, women’s organizations, and landscapes of extraordinary beauty. The stories came from a place that felt both personal and deeply embodied. To do the work I loved most and make a living from it felt surreal.
But as the pace of the digital world quickened, so did expectations. Pageviews needed to rise month over month. The demands of scale crept in quietly, then all at once. Without realizing it at the time, I was living through the slow erosion of long-form journalism.
The Quiet Trade-Off: Usefulness Over Truth
The era of the listicle arrived, and with it a shift in appetite. Readers wanted hacks, tips, and shortcuts. Lived experience and narrative depth were replaced by efficiency. As a culture, we began optimizing everything. Give me what I need, and give it to me quickly. I felt pressure to turn the site into a one-stop shop for guides and lists. Over time, that pressure dulled my relationship to writing itself.
As the quality of submissions declined, we partnered with Emerson College’s graduate Writing and Publishing program. Within a few months, the site became a student-run publication that tracked every emerging trend. The content was undeniably useful. It was also hollow. It lacked the texture and resonance that had drawn me to storytelling in the first place. I could feel the end approaching, and I was ready to step away, leaving my identity as a writer and editor behind.
The Space to Metabolize Experience
For the next seven years, I ran a nonprofit working in consultative status with the United Nations, developing women-led climate resilience projects in Rwanda. I used my skills as a writer and storyteller to raise funds and bring visibility to our work. I often felt more like a marketing director than an executive director, though in truth I was both. With a small creative team, we traveled to Rwanda to document field visits and share progress with donors. Those years were among the most meaningful of my life. Working alongside extraordinary communities of women required presence, humility, and patience. Slowly, I relearned how to move from the heart.
Alongside the nonprofit work, I made a living through my creative agency. During this time, photography emerged as a new creative anchor. Most of my work focused on visual assets for brands. After being published by National Geographic, I joined as an ongoing contributing photographer for social media. That experience felt like a homecoming, a culmination of years spent honing a visual language that aligned with my values. Writing returned quietly, without the pressure of performance or monetization. For the first time in years, it didn’t feel like advertising. Creatively, I felt closer to myself than I had since the early days of travel writing.
When I relocated from New Jersey to California, National Geographic simultaneously wound down the contributor program and shifted to a community-sourced platform. I was devastated, though I eventually took it as a signal to move forward. Shortly after, I joined a local startup built around a farm-to-table destination concept that included a market and café, restaurant, brewery, wellness and event spaces, an apothecary, and a working farm. I came on when the site was little more than concrete and a small trailer. Together with the founder, I helped shape the brand vision and narrative.
I knew startup life would be consuming, and it was. What began as a creative director role quickly expanded. I became director of marketing and operations, while also functioning as staff photographer, executive assistant, and head of people. Most days blurred together. The mandate was simple: produce. Revenue needed to grow, and I carried that weight until my body refused to cooperate. By the time I left, every ounce of creative energy I had once felt was gone. I didn’t need another sign. I knew it was time.
Writing as Integration, Not Performance
This return to writing is not about output or audience growth. It’s about integration. Writing now feels less like a means of proving relevance and more like a way of understanding what I’ve lived. I’m no longer interested in making language perform. I want it to listen. To hold complexity without resolving it. To reflect a life shaped by work, place, and proximity to both ambition and exhaustion. Writing, at this stage, is a practice of attention.
What This Writing Is (and Is Not)
This is not thought leadership, nor is it content designed to instruct or persuade. It is not a brand exercise or a promise of consistency. What it is, instead, is a collection of field notes. Essays written from the in-between. Observations drawn from a life spent moving between places and roles, from travel and community to conference rooms and extended silence. It’s an attempt to stay close to what feels true, even when clarity remains unfinished.
I’m not here to teach or to arrive at tidy conclusions. I’m here to walk alongside questions that continue to shape me. This writing is an invitation to slow down, to pay attention, and to remain open to what emerges when we stop rushing toward the next outcome. There is no promise of where this leads. Only the practice of showing up, again and again, with curiosity and care.
