A Passion Born From Change

"I didn't plan this business. It grew in the space that opened up when everything else fell away."

I like to have a plan…

For most of my life, I wanted to know the route before I hit the road. I liked predictability. I liked rhythms and rituals and the quiet comfort of knowing what was coming next. Change wasn't something I feared exactly — it was something I managed, planned for, kept at arm's length.

And then, over the span of about seven years, everything shifted anyway.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes…

The first thing to go was my career as a chef. From the outside, it looked like a stable, even enviable path — I was good at it, I had earned respect in it, and the future seemed clear. But something quieter than ambition was stirring underneath. A persistent nudge toward something different. I tried to push it down for a while. That never works.

Leaving wasn't just a career change. It was closer to a grieving process. The kitchen had been my identity — the sounds of it, the motion, the shared language of a line in full swing. Walking away from that meant walking away from a version of myself I had built over years. I felt fear, loss, self-doubt, and — underneath all of it, surprising me — a strange, tentative relief. For the first time in a long time, I didn't know what came next. And that space, as uncomfortable as it was, turned out to be exactly what I needed.

More changes…

Around that same time, my husband and I packed up and left the only home either of us had ever known. New state, new community, no map. The loneliness of that was real — not just missing specific people, but the particular disorientation of not knowing where you belong anymore. The rhythms I'd built my sense of self around were gone, and I had to figure out who I was without them.

What I didn't know yet was that the move would bring me to Innisfree Village — a community that has now been a second family to me for eight years. I didn't go there looking for belonging. I went looking for work. But it gave me something I hadn't realized I was searching for: a place where I was known for who I showed up as, not what I produced. That mattered more than I can adequately say.

Enter Chronic Illness

Layered through all of this was my endometriosis. The pain, the uncertainty, the exhausting cycle of flare-ups and recovery and not knowing when the next hard stretch would come. There were seasons where it felt like my body was just another thing I couldn't count on. I had to learn to advocate for myself in medical spaces that didn't always take me seriously, to listen to what my body was asking for, and to build a life that could hold the unpredictability of a chronic condition.

What I didn't expect was that it would also crack something open. During my recovery from surgery in December 2020, I needed something to do with my hands. Something with no stakes, no performance, no timeline. I found polymer clay.

At first it was just something to do. Then it became something I couldn't stop thinking about. Then it became Anam Cara Clay Goods.

This Wasn’t My Plan

I didn't plan this business. It grew in the space that opened up when everything else fell away — the career, the familiar home, the certainty about what my life was supposed to look like. The clay gave me a way to create again. To connect meaning and beauty in a different form. To build something that was entirely, unmistakably mine.

And somewhere along the way, I realized the business had given me something I hadn't expected: a platform. Every month, a portion of sales from Anam Cara Clay Goods goes to the Endometriosis Foundation of America. It's a cause that is deeply personal to me — and one I would never have been in a position to support if I hadn't taken the leap into building something of my own. That still moves me when I think about it. That pain became purpose. That grief became something I could give back.

Change Is Still Hard

I'm not going to tell you change is easy or that the discomfort is worth it in some tidy, inspirational way. Some of what I went through was genuinely hard, and some of it I'm still working through. But I will say this: I am more myself now than I have ever been. The career I mourned led me here. The move I dreaded led me to Innisfree. The diagnosis I didn't ask for led me to clay, and the clay led me to you.

Anam Cara means soul friend. The name wasn't chosen lightly. This business has become exactly that — a companion on the journey, a reminder that even in the middle of uncertainty, something honest and beautiful can grow.

I wouldn't change the road that led me here. Not a single turn of it.

I’d love to know…

If you're in the middle of your own season of change and want to hear more about how this all unfolded — join the community through the Soul Friends newsletter.