Eight days after my house fire, I was homeless and trying to survive in a cheap motel. That’s when I got the call that my sister had died from an overdose. I collapsed to my knees and sobbed and screamed for hours. The grief was overwhelming. My friend Jack sat beside me quietly the whole time. He didn’t try to fix anything. He just stayed. I cried through the night. The next morning, Jack and I painted this. Jack is a talented abstract artist, and as we were working he noticed the girl I had painted sitting in purple waves. He looked at it and said, “You’re Wavy Purple.” That became my new identity. To me, Wavy Purple meant strength, resilience, spiritual awareness, creativity, and the refusal to be stopped by life’s hardest moments. It meant that even though my heart had been broken open, I didn’t close it. I chose to remain connected. Since that moment, I’ve tried to live my life as my authentic self. This painting eventually became part of the inspiration behind creating the Purple Phoenix Collective — a space where people can rise, heal, and transform together. Sometimes the most beautiful things in our lives are born from the ashes.