THE FIRST KANN STORY.

THE STORY BEHIND KANN

THERE IS A REASON KANN HAD TO EXIST.

A note before you read: This story includes honest discussion of suicide, mental health struggles and difficult life experiences. Please take care of yourself while reading. If you or someone you know needs immediate support, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

If you met me today, you would probably meet the loud laugh first.

You would see the big personality, the big dreams, the steel toes, the pageant heels, the career and a woman who has made a pretty good habit of figuring shit out. All of that is genuinely me. But it is not the whole story.

For a long time, I thought being strong meant carrying everything well.

Work harder. Achieve more. Help everybody. Keep moving. Do not let anyone see you struggle.

I figured if I accomplished enough, stayed busy enough and became impressive enough, eventually I would feel like I was enough, too. So I became really good at looking okay.

The truth? I was not always okay.

At 21, I tried to take my own life. For years afterward, I did not know what to do with that part of my story. So I did what I knew how to do. I kept going. I worked. I accomplished. I smiled. I helped people. I built a career. I chased goals.

Then, in 2022, five days before I was supposed to walk across the Miss Wyoming stage, I found myself back in a darkness I thought I had already left behind.

Five days later, I did my hair, put on the dress, smiled for the pictures and stepped onto that stage. From the outside, I looked alive. Inside, I was fighting like hell to feel that way.

That season changed the way I see people forever.

WHEN STRENGTH STOPPED MEANING “HANDLE IT”

Life did not suddenly tie everything up with a cute little healing bow after that.

The years that followed brought a divorce, changing relationships, toxic family dynamics, career shifts, plans falling apart, public accusations I knew had no foundation in truth and a tumor diagnosis.

Through all of it, life kept asking me the same question:

Who are you when you cannot control what happens next?

My instinct had always been to handle it. Fix it. Work harder. Keep moving. Figure it out.

But some things were not mine to fix. Some required boundaries, grief, doctors, prayers, uncomfortable conversations and learning how to sit with uncertainty. I had to accept that I could not control every ending, opinion, relationship or outcome.

I could only control who I chose to be in the middle of it.

For the first time, I could not answer “Who are you?” with a list of accomplishments. I had to meet Keisha. Just Keisha.

And Lord, meeting her was interesting.

She was stubborn as hell. She was also tired, grieving some things, angry about others and trying to trust God while wanting the full plan, timeline, reasoning and preferably a color-coded spreadsheet.

But underneath all of it, she was still there.

Little by little, I learned to trust her. I learned I could survive an ending without becoming one. I could start over without calling myself a failure. I could set a boundary and still be kind. I could lose people without losing myself. I could be misunderstood without spending my life defending who I am.

And I could be scared as hell and still take the next step.

THE QUESTION THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING

For years, fear had been asking:

What if I can’t? What if I fail? Choose wrong? Get misunderstood? Start over and watch it fall apart?

Eventually, I got tired of letting fear finish every sentence.

So I changed the question.

“WHAT IF I KANN?”

That did not make me fearless. It gave me permission to find out.

And that was the beginning of KANN.

It was not a business plan, a marketing idea or a perfectly polished message I thought everybody else needed. I needed it first.

KANN became my reminder:

Keep going. Try again. Say the thing. Have the conversation. Take the chance. Set the boundary. Trust yourself. Get back up.

Give yourself the opportunity before deciding you are not capable.

You KANN.

WHY KANN BECAME BIGGER THAN ME

Then people started trusting me with pieces of their stories.

Someone had the conversation they had been avoiding. Someone walked away from what was hurting them. Someone started over. Someone finally said the big dream out loud. Someone simply made it through a day they were not sure they could handle.

And I realized this was never supposed to stop with me.

KANN was meant to become a place where people could collect their own proof.

That is why KANN is rooted in three things:

COMMUNICATION. CONFIDENCE. CONSISTENCY.

Not because I have mastered any of them. Girl, absolutely not.

I still overthink. I still rehearse entire conversations in my head only to say four actual sentences. I still take on too much. I still have days when I need to pray, call somebody who knows me well and remind myself that I do not have to solve my entire damn life by Tuesday.

But these days, communication means saying what is true instead of expecting people to read my mind.

Confidence means trusting myself enough to find out.

Consistency means coming back, even after the days when I did not get it right.

YOU’RE MY KIND OF PEOPLE

Give me the person who has been through some shit and somehow still has a soft heart.

The person who wants more from life but is not sure what more looks like yet.

The one learning that boundaries and love can exist in the same room.

The one who loves everybody around them fiercely and is finally realizing they deserve to be included in that love, too.

The one with a dream so big that saying it out loud still scares the hell out of them.

The one who can admit, “I have no freaking idea what I’m doing,” and still be curious enough to try.

Yeah, you’re my kind of people.

KANN is not me telling you, “Look what I survived.”

It is me sitting beside you and saying, “Do not call it the end yet, friend. You still have some proof to collect.”