My passion for storytelling began at a very early age. I grew up in the Rywood Forest in a rural town of 300 people in Northern California, and we had no stoplights but plenty of cow neighbors. Naturally, I turned to my imagination to entertain myself, but that wasn't the only reason I created Way to Escape. I'll get to that in a minute. I have vivid memories of being amongst my tree friends as a little girl and having this profound feeling that I was meant to do something great. We were a poor family. On welfare, I was the oldest of four, three little brothers. No one in my family had any sort of higher education, and by the end of each month, we were rationing out with hungry bellies the last of the groceries while we waited on the next set of food stamps. It's hard not to feel a little embarrassed as a kid when you wear the same shoes for a year straight and all of your clothes are from yard sales, but today I still wear the same shoes for way more than a year and I prefer thrift shopping and feel way cooler about it. However, back then, I always felt like the weirdo. And it wasn't just because my mom packed me a bare piece of lettuce for snack time. Both of my parents are mentally ill. I grew up in a household where domestic violence, child abuse, and neglect was the norm. My body retaliated and I developed a life-prennion autoimmune blood disorder that landed me in the hospital on and off for a significant chunk of my childhood. My parents illness tore our entire family apart. I escaped into my art. My mother abandoned our family for a man she met on the internet when I was 16 and then I was kicked out of the house and spent some time as a homeless teenager. I was determined to make a better life for myself. My dedication to excelling in academics, especially mathematics, landed me a near-full-ride scholarship to UCSB. Yes! Once I flew from the nest and divorced myself from my family, I realized how deeply the emotional scars from childhood were, and I knew I needed to get help. I started therapy around the age of 20, I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. My reality used to feel like a constant war. I was like a walking time bomb of autonomic nervous system reactions. I'm really didn't happy to say that today I no longer suffer from PTSD. Alongside over 12 years of therapy, key to my healing was my art, writing, dancing, and mindfulness practice. All of the books that I've published are somehow related to my healing journey. Under the sneak tree, the Wombuzelin of a village, crowd-spunded right here in Santa Barbara, acknowledges that we can turn adversity into advantage and the importance of building a community. All the things I can do is the journey of one little girl's huge imagination. That project was my way to nurture the maternal voice that was absent in my childhood. Izzy's ukulele adventure was the first kid's book where I explored the difficult emotions that children can experience in the face of learning something new. I toured around with my illustration and self-published books at comic conventions for a few years. It was incredibly rewarding, but very time-consuming. I was happy if I broke even. What I loved most about exhibiting was connecting to my audience. And it was around that time, I think, in 2009 that I started my daily sketch practice. There's the Wombuzelin book. I paused on touring for a while and decided to focus on honing my craft as an illustrator. Then in 2011, I started Boota Doodles, which branched off from my daily sketch practice. Boota Doodles was my way to start each morning with a visual reminder while coping with the grief of just having lost two people in my family and some other personal difficulties. So, having shared my work online since 2001, Boota Doodles was just another project that I decided to post on social media. The comic went viral in a matter of months. In 2013, after giving away hundreds of Boota Doodles, I decided to finally open an online gift shop. I was hesitant because I didn't have any experience in online retail. Today, the Boota Doodles community spans over 200,000 fans worldwide. The online shop reflects this love. It's a six-figure business. And I have a team that supports both the online shop and community. And I spread the love with donations to Kiva, Pachamama Alliance, Direct Relief, and our very own incredible children arts network. I remain dedicated to Boota Doodles' mission of adding love to the world, one doodle at a time, and continue to give the comic away for free. And you can sign up for it at Boota Doodles.com. Recently, I signed on with Andrews McMeal Universal. You know, the guy who said published Calvin and Hobbs? I have a book coming out in January. And it is appropriately called Imagine the Possibilities. You can pre-order it on Amazon. Whoo! January 5th comes out! So, the road to this moment honestly hasn't been easy. But it's been worth every minute of hard work. Of course, there's the sweat that all started people understand, the stuff that keeps you up late at night, right? But importantly, it's the personal work. My business is a direct extension of my inner success, which I've learned after trial and error is the most important thing to master. Such beauty has come out of such terror. The depths that I've explored along this journey have made me a more compassionate, patient, and stronger person.