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
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