The first time I took a pottery class was in 2010. My husband and I had just moved back to Boston (for the second time), and I was exhausted from years working as an Events Producer. I needed a break before diving into whatever came next. I’d always been surrounded by creatives, supporting and shaping their visions, but I never thought of myself as creative. I just knew I wanted to make something with my hands. Something that wasn’t tied to performance, progress, or perfection. Pottery wasn’t about mastery. It was about trying something that terrified me in the best way—being bad at something and doing it anyway.

Then, in 2012, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. In an act of pure love (and mild impracticality), my husband squeezed a pottery wheel into our cramped garage and wired a kiln into our laundry hookup. I didn’t improve as a potter during treatment—but I made. That was enough. Clay kept me present .

I got better. I went back to events. Bigger jobs, longer hours, more noise. I knew how to show up for other people’s visions—but still hadn’t figured out how to show up for my own.

Years later, in a handbuilding class in San Francisco, something shifted. For the first time, I didn’t feel like I had to prove anything. My inner critic—the one that constantly compared and shrank—got quiet. I started to imagine. To play. And just when I’d found this creative rhythm, the cancer came back.

But this time, I didn’t go back to my old life. I accepted the gift my husband had been offering for years: the chance to step away from work, and toward something entirely mine. I joined a studio. I found friends, mentors, a community that celebrated each scan, each firing, each brave little piece pulled from the kiln. I got back on the wheel with the help of patient teachers and kind hands.

Now I throw. I handbuild. I alter. I listen to the clay and let it take me somewhere I haven’t been before. I make things that bring me joy. I live with a deep sense of gratitude—for my body, for the people around me, for the fact that somehow, clay helped me find a part of myself I never thought I had.

I’m more grateful, more joyful, and more fully me than I’ve ever been.