Laura's Story
She Was Never Meant for Walls.
This is the full version. The before, the breaking, the prayer, and the woman who came out the other side of all of it.
Before Everything Broke
Freedom Was Never an Idea to Her. It Was Something She Felt.
Before she had language for it, before she understood what it meant, Laura was already chasing something bigger. She was the kid who was first out the door and last back in. The one who wanted to know where every road went. The one who noticed the smell of the mountains after the smog cleared.
Freedom was not an idea. It was something she felt in her body.
She built a life that from the outside looked full. Mother. Leader. Involved in everything. A presence in her community. The kind of person people were drawn to without being able to say exactly why.
And then it broke.
Not slowly.
Overnight.
The Loss
She Lost Her Smile. Not Metaphorically. Literally.
Alcohol did not enter casually. It took over completely. What followed was not just addiction. It was a complete loss of identity.
Her teeth deteriorated. Her confidence collapsed. Her sense of self disappeared. She did not just feel different. She did not know how to exist anymore.
The version of her that people loved, the version she knew, felt dead. And she believed it.
She lived in survival. Physically breaking down. Emotionally isolated. Caught in a relationship defined by control, abuse, and instability. An eating disorder took hold alongside the drinking. Two struggles feeding each other in the dark.
And underneath all of it, a voice. Constant. Relentless. Louder than her own thoughts. Telling her to drink. She fought it every day. And still gave in. Because it felt like the only way to make it stop.
The First Shift
A Broken Wrist. A Dislocated Shoulder. And a Call to 911.
There was not a perfect turning point. There was pain. Days on a couch, unable to move, drinking just to numb what she could not escape.
And then something shifted.
She called 911. Not because everything changed instantly. Because something in her chose not to disappear.
She went to her parents' home in Lockwood. Not a rehab facility. A place with structure, rules, support, and tension. She began to come back. Her smile returned. And with it a glimpse of herself.
But the battle was not over. She relapsed. Grief surfaced. Control patterns remained. Recovery was not clean. It was real.
September 2016
A Stoplight. A Raw Prayer. And Silence.
On the way to buy alcohol, at a stoplight, she prayed. Not polished. Not pretty. Raw.
And it answered.
Silence. After years of noise.
Not just a change in behavior. A change in her experience of life. She could see again. Hear again. Smell again. Food had taste. Nature had depth. Her body came back online. Her eating disorder stopped. Her mind cleared. Her life returned.
"God, please make this voice shut up." And it did.
Becoming Who She Always Was
She Stopped Trying to Shrink.
What came next was not becoming someone new. It was becoming who she had always been.
She stopped trying to be quieter. More acceptable. More controlled. She realized the things she had tried hardest to change about herself were the things people were drawn to. Her energy. Her humor. Her presence. She did not need to fix that. She needed to own it.
Recovery was not just sobriety. It was permission. Permission to take up space. Permission to be curious. Permission to follow every road to its end and trust that the finding would be worth the going.
Not Defined By Where She Has Been
She Does Not Hide It. She Uses It.
Laura carries light energy, sharp humor, deep curiosity, strong intuition, and emotional awareness. People are drawn to her because she is open, non-judgmental, and real. She has lived enough life to understand people quickly without needing them to explain themselves.
She does not just visit places. She maps them. She connects them. She understands them. She looks for story, origin, history, and the hidden details most people miss. She goes down rabbit holes. She finds places people do not know exist. She does not just show places. She makes people feel them.
To Laura, freedom is simple. Life on the road. Sobriety. Trusting her intuition. Not being controlled. Being with Jason. Living lightly. Laughing.
Freedom is not escape. It is peace, shared.
2019
They Did Not Meet at Their Best. They Met After Breaking.
Laura and Jason met as children through 4-H at the Salinas Valley Fair. He was her first boyfriend. Two kids from the same small rural world in Southern Monterey County, on different paths even then. She went to public school. He went to private. They lost each other for decades.
They did not reconnect until 2019. Both marked by struggle. Both shaped by their own separate recoveries. Both rebuilt.
This is not a typical relationship. It is built on faith, recovery, second chances, and a shared mission. Laura is curious, spontaneous, the emotional connector. Jason is structured, grounded, the builder. Together the contrast creates energy, not conflict.
They chose to rebuild together. And what they are building is MOTIVE.
From Personal Healing to Shared Purpose
She Co-Founded MOTIVE Because the Road Back Is Wider With More People On It.
Laura is not a supporting character in this brand. She is the connection point. The discovery engine. The emotional bridge between the brand and the people it is built to reach.
She co-founded MOTIVE because she knows what it costs to rebuild a life from nothing. She knows what it feels like when the version of yourself you loved feels dead. And she knows what it feels like when it comes back.
MOTIVE exists partly because of that knowledge. And Laura is the reason the brand knows how to make people feel seen, not just informed.
"I didn't need to fix the things people were drawn to. I needed to own them."
A Note From Laura
If you have ever lost yourself the way she did, hear this. The version of you that feels dead right now is not gone. It is buried under noise. Find the quiet. Pray it raw if you have to. The silence on the other side is real. And so is everything waiting for you after it.
The things you have been trying to change about yourself might be the things most worth keeping.
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