“I’m formally a corporate Chicago-type and worked for a very large corporation, working behind the desk on a headset internationally and working with people of different walks of life and timelines, and I just never personally connected with them; it just wasn’t there. I was communicating remotely with 100% of the people I was working with. I was detached from society and from being creative.

Before we moved, we did a test run. We drove down to see what it would be like after my husband was offered a position. He kind of put it up to me. We are driving and our car breaks down. We get it to a repair shop near 22nd Street (barely) and from there we were like, ‘What do we do?’ We just got on foot and turned the corner to head south on Main Street from Eldorado Street to go to the Lincoln Lounge to have a Bloody Mary. The first recognizable business that I absorbed was the hair school. I never would have noticed it if I was driving down the street, or if I wasn’t dealing with the broken car situation having to literally walk past the school. It was transformational for me. I was like, ‘If that isn’t a sign, I don’t know what is.’ I was on the fence about changing careers before that point.

We went to the Lincoln Lounge, we solidified the fact that we were going to move, and that I was changing my career. We moved down here. I closed my former life, started school and got it done as fast as I could.

You’re just sort of meant to cross paths. There’s something in our spirits that somehow finds a way to connect us all. I can tell you a million times over it’s because of the coincidences and the things that have come about that I am where I’m at. It was just meant to be.”