The Tiara Project is Back!
New, different, and somehow still the same.
I didn’t set out to become a speaker, a coach, or an advocate. I set out to survive trauma.
Around 2009, I hadn’t yet figured out what healing was going to look like for me. I just knew I wanted to continue supporting others. So, there wasn’t one dramatic moment when everything changed. There was simply a day when I put on a tiara.
And then I wore it to the grocery store.
It sounds almost ridiculous when I say it that way. A grown woman wearing a tiara while pushing a shopping cart through the aisles. But there was something about putting that tiara on my head that helped me begin to see myself differently.
For years, domestic violence and abuse had taught me to make myself smaller. To be quiet. To carry shame that was never mine to carry. The tiara became my way of reclaiming something I had lost: my right to be seen, to take up space, and to decide who I was going to be.
At first, I wore a button that said, “Ask Me About My Tiara.”
That was the invitation.
I wanted the tiara to start conversations. I wanted people to ask why I was wearing it, because behind the ridiculousness of a tiara in the grocery store–and drawing attention to myself when I was supposed to be silent–was a story about survival, healing, and finding my voice again.
But most people didn’t ask.
They looked away.
And that stayed with me.
Because looking away is what we often do when something makes us uncomfortable. We look away from domestic violence. We look away from abuse. We look away from the person who might need help because we don’t know what to say, or because we don’t want to know what happens next.
So the tiara became more than something I wore.
It became a symbol.
A symbol of choosing to be seen after years of being silenced. A symbol of beginning to heal when I didn’t have a roadmap. A symbol of the possibility that surviving could eventually become something more than survival.
In 2017, that little tiara took me all the way onto a TEDx stage.
Since then, I’ve continued finding different ways to empower survivors, share stories, create conversations, and remind people that healing doesn’t have to look one particular way. The projects have changed. The platforms have changed. I have changed.
But the message underneath it all hasn’t.
I’m coming back to something that has quietly held me for a very long time.
The Tiara Project.
This time, it may look different. I’m different. My understanding of healing is different. I have more words now for things I once couldn’t explain, and more compassion for the woman who was simply trying to make it through the day.
But I still believe in the power of the tiara. Not because wearing one magically makes everything okay. It doesn’t. The tiara was never about pretending I wasn’t hurting. It was about choosing to believe that the woman underneath the hurt was still there.
The Tiara Project is for the messy middle of healing. It’s for learning to trust yourself again, finding your voice, reclaiming your creativity, and discovering who you are when your life finally begins to feel like your own.
It’s for the days when courage looks like telling the truth. Sometimes to the world. Sometimes only to yourself.
I’m a survivor, a writer, a speaker, and a coach. I’ve spent years learning how to turn what happened to me into something that can help someone else. But more than anything, I’m someone who is willing to go first.
I’ll keep wearing the tiara.
And maybe this time, instead of looking away, we can ask each other about it. Because sometimes a conversation is where healing begins.