I didn't set out to start a business. I set out to survive one of the darkest seasons of my life.

In the fall of 2020, I was in a job that had gotten heavier than I could carry, and I was stuck, overwhelmed, and running on empty.

So I turned to the thing that had always gotten me through hard seasons: creativity. Two blocks of polymer clay, a paperclip, and some water bottle caps later, I had my first pair of earrings. They were bad. Genuinely bad. But making them woke something up in me that I hadn't felt in years.

That first pair turned into a pile of earrings, then a pile of handmade goods, and eventually enough of a collection that I worked up the nerve to apply to a local market. I figured I'd get turned down. Instead I got in, and I sold over $400 worth of earrings in a single day. More than the money, what stuck with me was the feeling. I hadn't felt hopeful about something in a long time.

I named the business Muddy Lotus because of an idea that's stuck with me for years: a lotus doesn't bloom in spite of the mud, it blooms because of it. Our best stuff tends to come out of our hardest seasons. I didn't know it yet, but this business was going to be exactly that for me, my own way of pushing up through the mud toward something better.

Not long after, I left my full-time job. I still wasn't making much yet, but I was done being burnt out and underpaid, and I was ready to put everything into Muddy Lotus.

The following season, the Bengals started winning, and things got a little wild. I threw together a scrappy pair of "WHO" and "DEY" earrings before a playoff game, wore them out, posted a picture, and my DMs blew up. I was meeting people in parking lots to hand off orders before kickoff. By the time the team made it to the Super Bowl, I could barely keep up with the city's demand. The following season, a Bengals cheerleader reached out about a collab and we designed a custom pair of earrings for all of the cheerleaders. A few weeks later I watched them wear my earrings on Monday Night Football. That one still doesn't feel real.

Somewhere in the middle of all that chaos, friends started asking me to make things for their big life events. Then small business owners started finding me, usually because they needed signage or branded merch and didn't have anyone local they trusted to make it. That side of the work kept growing, and it turned out to be the part I loved most. I moved out of my home studio and into a 1,300 square foot space, brought in a UV printer and a bigger laser, and started saying yes to bigger projects.

These days, Muddy Lotus is mostly about helping weddings, events, and small businesses show up looking like themselves. I create the thoughtful details that make an event or a brand feel personal. It's the work I love most, and where I put the majority of my energy these days.

I'm not just making things. I'm helping people tell their story, whether that's a couple planning their wedding day or a small business trying to look as good in person as they do in their head. Telling my own story is what saved me. Now I get to help other people tell theirs.

Thank you to everyone who has supported this along the way. You're why I keep blooming.