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At age 3, she faced food and financial insecurity—so she became an entrepreneur.
At 5, bored in kindergarten, she taught everyone long-division.
At 10, denied the right to play football with boys, she later became captain of her college’s women’s intercollegiate football team.
At 19, during a year abroad in Istanbul, she witnessed the oppression of women—so she became both an attorney and a self-defense instructor. At 22, she overcame her greatest fear (sharks), when she learned to SCUBA dive in the cold and dark Salish Sea near her hometown of Tacoma, Washington. By 28, she was writing non-profit legislation for Congress and winning a national award for her activism (empowering employees on Capital Hill). That’s when she realized that real change doesn't trickle down from power structures, it grows from the roots up. At 30, she walked away from civil rights litigation and created her own law firm built on empowerment and the radical idea that clients should feel cared for—not controlled. Not knowing how to escape the box of apartment living in Oakland, she bought a sailboat in the San Francisco Bay and lived aboard for a decade. At 35, disillusioned by the empty promises of the “American Dream,” she met her Faerie Godmother, Ariel Spilsbury, and stepped into the myth of the mermaid to reclaim the parts of herself she had long suppressed—her Divine Feminine. She established the non-profit arm of the 13 Moon Mystery School in anticipation of the future temple’s emergence. When she couldn’t find mystical attire to reflect this inner change, she opened a nonprofit Goddess shop where women could walk in tired and stuck—and walk out mythically transformed. Although the store was eventually sold, she still offers “mythic makeovers” one-on-one. As Vyana stepped more fully into her mystical mermaid persona, she hosted an international mermaid convention hosting 33 magical mermaids from around the world at Harbin Hotsprings. |
