“We don’t talk about these things.” That is a phrase that has been repeated in my family about a myriad of subjects for years. Whether it’s money, sex, sickness, or anything that may make certain people uncomfortable, we just don’t talk about it. My approach as a playwright is to smash that norm. I want to take the beautiful, painful, exhilarating, disgusting moments of life and put them on a stage to let others know they aren’t alone.

I am extremely lucky to say I have a group of six close girlfriends I have had since high school. The “Marathoners,” we like to call ourselves. What started as a group of friends watching Disney movie marathons, turned into a deep connection that has lasted over a decade. Our Marathons morphed and changed over the years, but each and every one requires a specific list of junk food (Swedish Fish dipped in icing - you’re welcome) and an open heart. It was at one of these Marathons, I told my best friends in the entire world that I had been date raped earlier that year. Even though these ladies were my closest friends in the world, I was scared of how they would react. Would they judge me? Was it my fault? Am I different person to them now? To my shock, they each had their own story to share. I was not alone. In that moment I felt loved and supported but also angry and dismayed. How did this happen to each and every one of us?

In the fall of 2017, a seismic shift happened in our social consciousness. As I scrolled through my social media, a hashtag kept popping up over and over again: #MeToo. Women from all different points of my life (and even some men) began posting this phrase, some posting just the hashtag, some posting detailed descriptions of their specific #MeToo moment. It happened to me. It happened to my six best friends. It happened to my mother. It happened to my teacher from elementary school. It happened to so many of us. For so many years I viewed rape and sexual assault as many others did. It is a strange villain twirling his mustache and waiting down a dark alleyway to pounce on some poor, innocent young woman he didn’t know. But it isn’t that black and white. It’s a sad, scary, and daunting spectrum of gray. That’s where it lives and that’s what inspired me to start writing my first play "Scar Tissue". I knew this play would hit home for so many women, but I had no idea how many men would respond so enthusiastically to it. After the workshop production at Dixon Place, I was confronted by person after person, men and women, gay, straight, and everything in between, telling me how they saw themselves in all of the characters. It was their story behind told and being heard. My first experience as a playwright had me shedding a light on what has been kept in the dark for so long. I’ve taken that to heart as a new playwright and have decided that I want all of my writing to reflect that.