My Mental Health Journey and Why I Started The Butterfly Within Foundation
For most of my life, I thought healing was supposed to feel like a finish line, something you cross once, breathless but done. I imagined some version of myself who would finally be '“better,” who wouldn’t fall apart on a random Friday afternoon for reasons I couldn’t name.
But healing isn’t linear. It’s a loop. A cycle. A quiet return to myself over and over again.
Some seasons I’ve bloomed, others I’ve crawled, and many I’ve simply tried to just keep my head above water. There were moments where I felt light again, and moments where the weight came back so sudden. For a long time, I thought I was just broken.
Healing isn’t the absence of pain– it’s learning how to hold yourself when it comes back.
I didn’t grow up in a place where those things were said out loud. In my family, in my community, in so many rooms i’ve been in, you’re expected to be strong. Suffering privately. Not wanting to inconvenience anyone.
Silence is so heavy.
When I started opening up, something unexpected happened. The people around me started opening up too. My family began talking about emotions in ways they never had. People who barely knew me would confess things they’d been carrying alone for years.
And it hit me:
Sometimes all it takes is one person choosing honesty to remind everyone else that they’re allowed to feel.
That moment became the seed for The Butterfly Within Foundation.
A butterfly doesn’t transform right away. It breaks down. It dissolves. It becomes unrecognizable before it becomes beautiful. Transformation requires surrender before it ever becomes flight. That has been my life. Dissolving, rebuilding, learning how to breathe inside my own body again.
And I know I’m not the only one.
Too many people are moving through their lives quietly hurting, quietly drowning, quietly pretending.
Too many people don’t have language for what they feel.
Too many people think they have to earn the right to be cared for.
I wanted to build a space that interrupts that silence.
A place where people don’t have to be perfect to be understood.
Where emotional cycles aren’t treated like flaws, but like part of being human.
The Butterfly Within Foundation exists because I never want anyone to believe they have to walk through their healing alone.
This is the beginning of a community built on softness, honesty, and support. A place for every version of you — the one who’s growing, the one who’s hurting, the one who’s trying again.
Your healing will have cycles.
Your journey will have setbacks.
Your metamorphosis will look nothing like anyone else’s.
And that’s okay.
If you’re here, you’re already doing the brave thing by showing up, even if it’s just to read this.
Welcome to The Butterfly Within Foundation.
I hope you find pieces of yourself here.
I hope you feel seen here.
We’re just getting started, and I’m honored you’re part of the beginning.