Creating Rarely Ordinary Collection and Hope in Stripes

Rarely Ordinary Collection was not born from a business plan.

It wasn’t a carefully plotted brand strategy or a polished entrepreneurial leap. It wasn’t market research or a sudden burst of inspiration that led me here. It was necessity—slow, relentless necessity—born from the realization that the language available to describe my life was inadequate, and the systems designed to support people like me were built for a version of illness that doesn’t resemble reality.

I didn’t need more motivational quotes.
I didn’t need another reminder to “stay positive.”
I didn’t need a worldview that demanded I turn suffering into something palatable before it could be acknowledged.

I needed truth.

I needed words that didn’t minimize pain or frame suffering as personal failure. Words that didn’t demand gratitude for survival while ignoring the cost of it. Words that could hold complexity—grief and hope, anger and love, loss and persistence—without forcing resolution.

Because the truth is: chronic illness isn’t a single chapter in a story. It’s an ongoing rewriting of the entire book.

And for a long time, the only stories available to me were the ones that didn’t fit.

The ones that treated illness like a temporary obstacle you overcome if you try hard enough. The ones that measured worth by productivity, recovery, and resilience optics. The ones that asked people to perform wellness to deserve compassion. The ones that insisted pain must lead somewhere inspiring, or it wasn’t worth mentioning at all.

That language harmed me.

It taught me to doubt my own body. To shrink my needs. To apologize for existing in a way that made others uncomfortable. It taught me that the “acceptable” versions of chronic illness were the quiet ones—the ones that didn’t disrupt anyone else’s expectations. The ones that were inspirational at a safe distance.

So Rarely Ordinary Collection began as an act of refusal.

A refusal to disappear quietly.
A refusal to let my life be flattened into a diagnosis or a cautionary tale.
A refusal to accept that the only acceptable stories of illness are the ones that end neatly.

It began with a need for validation—not the shallow kind, but the kind that tells the truth: You are not imagining this. You are not too sensitive. You are not failing. This is hard because it is hard.

Rarely Ordinary Collection exists because ordinary frameworks failed.

When your life is shaped by chronic illness, disability, medical trauma, or the slow erosion of capacity, the world does not hand you a map. You are expected to keep showing up anyway. To keep producing. To keep smiling. To make your pain private. To make your grief small. To carry the weight without disturbing the room.

And if you can’t? You’re labeled dramatic. Difficult. Lazy. Negative. A problem.

I built Rarely Ordinary Collection because I needed a space that didn’t require me to perform wellness to be taken seriously.

I needed language that validated instead of erased.

At the same time, I needed tools.

Not motivational slogans.
Not wellness platitudes.
Not systems built for bodies that function predictably.

I needed practical support—resources that acknowledged what it’s like to live with symptoms that fluctuate hour to hour, day to day. Tools that helped in the real world: during appointments, during flares, during hospitalizations, during the long stretches where you’re trying to survive inside a system that treats your suffering as optional.

I needed symptom trackers that reflected chaos instead of consistency. Medical ID tools that captured complexity instead of oversimplifying it. Advocacy guides that named gaslighting, dismissal, and burnout instead of pretending healthcare is neutral. Language guides that replaced shame with self-trust. Resources that recognized that survival often happens in fragments, not routines.

The tools I was searching for didn’t exist.

So I began creating them.

At first, it was for me. A way to survive the next appointment. A way to remember what my body was doing when my brain was overloaded. A way to advocate when words were hard to access. A way to document patterns so they couldn’t be dismissed. A way to have something solid in my hands when everything else felt unstable.

But over time, it became clear that I wasn’t alone in needing these things.

People were drowning in the same places I was drowning. They were being dismissed in the same exam rooms. They were walking into appointments without language, without support, without tools, and leaving with nothing but shame. Caregivers were trying to help but didn’t know how. Loved ones were desperate to understand without accidentally causing harm. People were surviving in silence because no one had taught them how to speak about what they were living.

Rarely Ordinary Collection became a way to pass lifelines forward.

Not as fixes.
Not as cures.
But as companions.

Because sometimes what you need most isn’t a solution.

It’s a framework. A tool. A sentence that makes you feel less alone. A resource that reduces harm. A reminder that your body’s reality is valid even when the world refuses to acknowledge it.

Hope in Stripes followed naturally.

Once the tools existed, the stories demanded space.

There were too many truths that didn’t fit anywhere else. Too many lived experiences that were dismissed as “negative” simply because they were honest. Too many people carrying grief that had nowhere to land. Too many moments that inspiration culture doesn’t know what to do with: the days you don’t get better, the months you lose, the friendships that fade, the fear that lives under your skin after medical trauma.

Hope in Stripes became that place.

A space to tell the stories that do not perform wellness. Stories that name anger without apology. Stories that acknowledge loss without rushing toward silver linings. Stories that refuse to turn suffering into content designed to make other people feel comfortable.

Hope, as I understand it now, is not blind optimism.

Hope is not pretending things don’t hurt.
Hope is not forcing gratitude around grief.
Hope is not insisting that everything happens for a reason.

Hope is defiance.

Hope is staying.

It’s choosing to remain present in a body that changed the rules. It’s advocating again after being dismissed. It’s rebuilding a life from what remains. It’s letting survival be enough when the world wants you to be inspirational.

Hope in Stripes exists for the days when pain is not productive.
For the moments when grief resurfaces without warning.
For the people who have been told they are too much—or not sick enough—or too complicated to be helped.

It exists to say: you are not alone in this, and you never were.

Creation became how I stayed.

When my body could no longer guarantee safety, creation offered grounding. When my nervous system was overloaded with trauma, writing gave it somewhere to go. When silence felt dangerous, language became protection.

Writing was not catharsis. It was translation.

A way to turn experiences that lived only in my body into something shareable, survivable, and connective. A way to name what so many people live through without language. A way to tell the truth without begging for belief.

Resources became extensions of that same impulse.

Each tool I create carries a question: What would have helped me when I was drowning?
Each guide asks: How can this reduce harm, even slightly?
Each post asks: How can this help someone feel less alone in their body today?

Rarely Ordinary Collection and Hope in Stripes are not separate from my life. They are continuations of it.

They hold everything illness took and everything survival taught me. They exist because I learned how easily people are erased when their suffering is inconvenient. Because I know what it costs to keep going. Because I understand the difference between being alive and being okay—and the sacred, difficult space in between.

This work is not about overcoming.

It is about continuing.

About building something honest from what remains. About honoring lives that are complex, constrained, brilliant, painful, resilient, and deeply human. About creating space for stories that matter—even when they make others uncomfortable.

Rarely Ordinary Collection exists because ordinary frameworks failed.

Hope in Stripes exists because hope had to be redefined.

And I continue to create—not because it is easy, not because it is profitable, not because it resolves anything—but because it is how I stay.

And staying, for me, has always been an act of defiance.