My journey in writing and illustrating children's books started in high school when I was planning on becoming a teacher. I studied Early Childhood Education at my vocational school. While there, we learned about the education work field and child development. In the program, we were also able to write lesson plans and use them when we taught the children in our labratory preschool. I always had an aptitude for art, but never really wanted to pursue it and I didn't take that many art classes in high school. However, I did use the Early Childhood Education program as my outlet for art as much as I could in any project or activity possible. 

 

    My initial idea for writing children's books came from writing lesson plans. That was because the themes of our lessons were either to be based off of a certain letter of the alphabet or a special event/holiday for that week. When it came to certain alphabet letters, lesson plans were hard to create. Specifically, finding a topic to teach and a book to go along with it. Letters such as Q, X, and Y were probably the most difficult. So one day when one of my friends was trying to write her lesson plan for letter Q,  and just couldn't come up with a book for it. That lead me to mess around and I wrote the manuscript for the first book idea I ever had. (That book will be realeased someday.) I figured after doing so, I could do something with this and write children's books alongside teaching, but then I forgot all about the idea. I went on to graduate from high school and chose to take a gap year before going to my #1 college of choice.

 

    But then life didn't quite go as planned. A few months after graduation, I got diagnosed with Autoimmune Hepatitis. That is when your immune system decides to attack your healthy liver cells. I spent some time in the hospital and was put on medication to supress my immune system.  Having this rare disease made me have to re-think what I was going to do with my life and I came to the conclusion that teaching wasn't the right way to go anymore. It's an unpredictable illness and when I'm on medication, I have a weak immune system and working with children isn't the best idea. I also just figured that maybe teaching not my true passion, and I also didn't really feel like going to college at that point. It's not for everyone. 

 

    Life then became frustrating because at one point I thought I knew what I wanted to do with my life, and then I didn't. Part of me wanted to work with children, and the other didn't. But no matter what, I will always care for their well-being and their development. Even though things got confusing and frustrating, art was always in the back of my mind. When Christmas came around that year, I decided to paint portraits for my family members. After all of the compliments I got, I realized my true potential and how much I actually do like to do that sort of thing. I never wanted to pursue art in the first place because I never really thought anyone else would take it seriously. But then the idea of writing children's books resurfaced and I figured this was the best way to teach children outside of the classroom, help them grow in their areas of development, and embrace my art abilities. The rest was history, and the best is yet to come :)