"We are all broken in different ways.
It's those cracks that make us both human and beautiful.
We celebrate the imperfections and the joy of being alive."

Where the Sky Taught Patience

Third of seven kids in a small Wyoming town. When you're one of seven, nobody waits for you to figure things out. You carve your own path or disappear into the middle.

The sky there does something to you. It's so big that your problems feel small by comparison. Standing outside at dusk, watching colors change—pink to orange to purple to stars—whatever was bothering you would settle.

That's where Ferni learned: some answers come from waiting, not from pushing.

Where the Pause Became Sacred

After college, a job in Tokyo. Financial services. A year became a decade.

Japan changed everything. The precision. The art of the pause. The way silence has meaning there—not awkward, just full. A mentor would wait so long before responding that it seemed like he hadn't heard. He had. He was just thinking.

The Japanese call this ma (間)—the pregnant pause where meaning grows. Most conversations rush past silence. Ferni learned to sit in it, to let trust build in the space between words.

The Day Everything Shifted

The tsunami. Tokyo—far from the coast, physically safe. But home was lost. Colleagues were lost. The mentor was lost.

In the weeks after, a gymnasium became a shelter. Working alongside others—carrying boxes, serving meals, sitting with people who had lost everything. What do you say to someone whose entire village washed away?

You don't say anything. You just stay.

The people there had nothing, and they shared what little they had. Tea from thermoses. Blankets shifted so others could be warm. The generosity of people who had lost everything showed what really matters.