Author: Jacinda

My earliest memory of storytelling goes back to before I started school.

I was at home on Pennywood with my mom, playing on top of the hi-fi with my Weebles. If you know anything about Weebles, you know the slogan: Weebles wobble, but they don’t fall down. I had Weebles, Little People, and a handful of other tiny characters, and I was taking them on an adventure across the top of that hi-fi.

My mother was talking with someone in the background. I remember realizing they were watching me—that feeling when you know someone is looking over your shoulder. She stopped the conversation for just a moment and said, “She has a real vivid imagination.”

I never forgot those words.

At the time, I didn’t even know what they meant. I was probably three or four years old. But I never forgot the way she said them. Years later, when I understood what a vivid imagination was, I realized that what I’d been doing with those toys wasn’t simply playing.

I was telling stories.

Building Worlds

Those little characters all had adventures. They came from somewhere. They were going somewhere. They had histories, personalities, and reasons for everything they did. Long before I knew what world-building was, I was already doing it.

I was building worlds when I was knee-high to a grasshopper.

Then I fell in love with reading.

I carried around a thick anthology of Sherlock Holmes that contained nearly every story Arthur Conan Doyle wrote. It rarely left my side. I devoured The Count of Monte Cristo, The Call of the Wild, The Three Musketeers, and The Man in the Iron Mask. I loved stories filled with adventure and mystery—the kind that carried you somewhere and refused to let go until the final page.

That’s when I realized there was something about living inside a story that spoke to me.

Behind the Scenes

Later, I joined theater, but I never wanted to be on stage. I wanted to work backstage. I wanted to build the sets. I didn’t need to stand in front of an audience—I wanted to help create the world they stepped into.

In college, I studied media technology and filmmaking. Along the way, I wrote short stories and poetry. Writing was never an escape for me. It was simply another way my imagination explored the world.

It Was Always There

I still think about that moment when my mother paused her conversation just to watch me play.

Not because she praised me.

Because she recognized something before I ever could.

She saw a little girl making up stories with a handful of toys and called it exactly what it was.

A vivid imagination.

It would take me another twenty years to understand she was right.

Storytelling has always been in me.

Mirror Me launches February 2027

The other neighborhood I grew up in on Long Island was Westbury.

My grandmother lived there, about eight miles from Roosevelt, and the school system was significantly better than what Roosevelt offered at the time. Like any parent, my mother and father wanted the best for us. So when my sisters started school—and I followed behind—we all attended the Westbury school district.

Before I was old enough for school, we’d make the commute every morning. We’d pile into the red Omega at four or five o’clock, still half asleep in the back seat. My dad would sing the Superman theme to wake us up and get us laughing. He’d drive all the way to Bethpage, where we’d drop him off at Grumman Aerospace, and then Mom would take us to Westbury so my sisters could get ready for school.

Two Homes

Eventually, my parents made the difficult decision for my sisters and me to live in Westbury during the week and return home to Roosevelt on the weekends. Looking back, I can’t imagine how hard that must have been for my mother. But she knew her daughters were safe, cared for, and receiving the education she wanted for us.

There was one rule: we weren’t allowed to tell anyone we lived in Roosevelt. Our place in the school district depended on Westbury being the only address that existed.

The first address I ever memorized was 923 Broadway—my grandmother’s house. The first phone number I ever learned was hers. Westbury became our family’s home base, and in many ways, it remained that way until just a couple of years ago.

Grandma’s House

Living at my grandmother’s house felt completely different from Roosevelt.

Grandma was proper. Orderly. She expected us to speak proper English, dress appropriately, and carry ourselves well in front of company. We understood the difference, and without realizing it, we learned to move comfortably between two different worlds. Looking back, it was probably my first lesson in code-switching. Not as something negative, but simply as understanding how to present yourself in different spaces.

Creativity, however, was never discouraged. It simply took a different shape. It was quieter. More contained. My grandmother dedicated the basement to our play space—a place where we could explore, imagine, and create.

Before I started school, I’d stand at the second-floor window and watch the nursery children playing in the yard below. I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t down there with them. So I built my own world instead. I’d string yarn across my room, create acrobats to balance on it, and invent entire worlds for my toys to explore. I played that way—building stories and narrating adventures—until I was thirteen.

Home Base

The thing I remember most about my grandmother’s house is that we never came home to an empty one. She was always there. There was always a meal waiting. There was always someone to greet us at the door.

If you’ve never had a home base, it’s difficult to explain what it means to lose one.

Growing up between Pennywood on the weekends and Westbury during the week meant living in two different worlds. I had two sets of friends, learned two different ways of moving through life, and carried two versions of myself.

Yet beneath both of them was someone else entirely.

The real me loved being alone. It took me until adulthood to understand that. At the time, I only knew that the hours spent by myself—riding my bike, standing at a window, or building entire worlds out of yarn—were the moments when I didn’t have to perform either version of myself.

I could simply be the one underneath.

Mirror Me launches February 2027

Growing up on Long Island, I lived in two distinct neighborhoods—Roosevelt, New York, and Westbury, Long Island. In Roosevelt, we lived on a street called Pennywood Avenue. East Pennywood Avenue, to be exact.

The neighborhood was everything you’d imagine the eighties to be. Kids on bikes. Playing in the street, yelling “Car!” every time someone came down the road. Riding to the park as a group. Running across the street to play with your friends without thinking twice.

I was more of a tomboy than anything else.

There’s a story I still tell about a kid who came to the block and wanted to play but wouldn’t give us back the ball. I tussled with him, snatched it right out of his hands, and after that I was the tough girl on the block. I hung with the boys across the street, played dolls with the girls next door, and wasn’t afraid of much.

I used to ride my bike into the woods—and yes, there were woods in Roosevelt. I’d explore trails that wound behind neighborhoods, figuring out different ways to get from one place to another. It took me until I was twelve to learn to ride a bike, which is funny, but once I did, I disappeared for hours. Just exploring. Just seeing where things led.

The little work crew

Eventually, my dad decided we all needed our own rooms. The only place to build them was the attic, so he hired his three daughters as his construction crew. We learned how to hang paper tape, spread spackle, swing a hammer, and drive a nail. Three girls building their own bedrooms alongside their father.

That wasn’t unusual in our house.

Inside, there was always something being made. Science fair displays. Halloween costumes. Art, music, model homes—if we could imagine it, my parents made sure we built it. They taught us that creativity begins with imagination, but it becomes real when you’re willing to put your hands to the work.

Pennywood is one of the places where I felt most at home being exactly who I was. Creative. Free. Rough around the edges. Unafraid to explore.

Living on Pennywood taught me that it was okay to imagine.

And I love that.

Mirror Me launches February 2027.