Some of my earliest memories are of bare feet in my grandmother’s backyard, fingers trailing through herb gardens while the Virginia mountains watched over me. Getting me to put on shoes — or anything, really — was a task nobody could manage. The mountains have always had that effect on me. They pull me back, root me, remind me who I am.

My family has called these hills home for over 300 years, winding through the mountains of North Carolina and Virginia. Cherokee blood and Scottish highlander wildness run through my veins, and somewhere in that lineage lives a deep, unspoken reverence for the earth beneath your feet.

About two years ago, at one of the lowest points in my life, I found clay. Or maybe it found me. Throwing on the wheel became something sacred — a conversation between my hands and the earth, a way of turning pain into something beautiful and useful. It was only up from there.

Today I create out of Mud Mamas studio in Hickory, NC, dreaming of the day I have a studio of my own, somewhere the mountains can keep watch. Every piece I make carries a little of that journey — wild, rooted, and made with my whole heart.