In middle school, the game of basketball found me. It became my purpose and my identity.
By high school, it was all I wanted: to take the game as far as I could and play at the highest level I could.
Basketball, family, friends, and faith became the foundation I built my identity and life on.
After graduating high school in 2017 as one of the best players in the conference, I was still left with 0 college scholarship offers to play. With optimism and faith, I chose to attend a military prep basketball school over giving up and going right to college as a regular student. That decision led me to a Division II scholarship and the internal belief that persistence can lead to great rewards.
College opened my world. New people, new freedom, new experiences.
I transferred schools after a successful freshman season, seeking growth and opportunity on & off the court. This led to two years of being sidelined by circumstances beyond my control: a redshirt season my sophomore year, and a COVID year my junior year .
During that time, my faith softened, my routines shifted, and my identity became tied to external validation – performance, approval, and expectations.
In the spring of 2021, everything changed.
I experienced a series of events that led to hospitalization and a diagnosis of bipolar disorder. What followed was a year marked by repeated hospitalizations, depression, anxiety, isolation, and a complete unraveling of my identity.
For the first time in my life, I became aware of how much I had buried within myself beneath performance and external approval. I could no longer hide what I was going through — my struggles were visible.
The identity I had built — athlete, extrovert, people pleaser — no longer held me together.
I realized I had constructed myself around who I thought the world wanted me to be, not who I truly was.
That collapse became the beginning of something else.
I started from scratch with most of my beliefs — not from rejection, but from honesty. I no longer wanted beliefs rooted in approval and fear. I wanted alignment and truth.
I turned inward:
I encountered voices and ideas that changed my direction, including the work of Dr. Joe Dispenza, the On Purpose podcast with Jay Shetty, and the book ‘The Soul of a Butterfly’ by Muhammed Ali.
For the first time, I began to look within and move towards a path of healing and wholeness.
In 2022, I graduated with my bachelors and had 2 extra years of eligibility on the court which led me to transferring schools once again and beginning my graduate studies with a new focus:
To not just be an athlete on the court, but to become a more aligned, authentic version of myself in life.
That summer of 2022 before I left for Le Moyne college in Syracuse NY, I wrote in my journal:
The seed was planted.
In 2023, the idea became reality.
My nickname “Salt” became a philosophy:
to live intentionally, aligned, and with a grain of salt.
The With A Grain of Salt platform and podcast was born as a space for honest conversation about:
Not to give answers — but to help people become aware & see things from a different lens.
Today, this work exists to help people live with greater alignment, intention, and authenticity.
I believe:
we don’t change our lives by forcing behavior —
We change our lives by changing how we see. How we see ourselves, how we see others, and how we see all the different facets of this journey we call life.
Through content, conversation, mentoring, and community, my goal is to help people become more aligned & authentic versions of themselves. One grain of salt at a time.
If you feel called to grow, to question things, to heal, and to live more intentionally —
Then you’re in the right place.
Listen to the Podcast Mentorship/Coaching Join the Community