About Me
I was raised in Santa Cruz, with two older sisters, and we lived there for most of our years growing up. I went to Italy for 3 weeks after I graduated high school to follow my passion for architecture and design. When I came back, I knew I wanted to design interiors, so I went to San Francisco to interior design school-but ended up working full time to be able to live there.I met Daniel, my husband on the bus on Valentine's Day (we were both talking trash about the holiday together) and soon, he showed me how to follow my heart and not to accept anything less through practicing Buddhism. I looked into getting back to school and saw that the Los Angeles campus had night classes, so I could work and go to school. In less than two weeks, I landed in San Fernando Valley, staying with my sister Cathy in her 1 bedroom apartment. After practicing Buddhism for over a year, I decided to join the Soka Gakkai, (the organization that practices Nichiren Daishonin's Buddhism), and have been striving ever since, alongside my mentor, Daisaku Ikeda, to achieve lasting happiness for myself and others, no matter what.I believe that all people are worthy of respect, and I believe religion exists for the sake of the people, not people living for the sake of religion. Somehow, that is a grave mistake, where people forget their humanity and put religion in the place where their behavior as a human being should be. In addition, I think its important, if not essential, to have a mentor in life, (not necessarily just someone that is skilled or has more experience in the area of your career/interests), but someone who you can look at and go, wow, what a great person they are, they are doing so much for so many people. I think if you have someone like that in your life, that you are influenced by, write to, talk to, etc, then you are indomitable in life.
