Rising From the Fire — Why Strong Lady Mechanics Exists

I Walk Through Fire — My First Blog

For most people, opening a business sounds like the hardest thing they’ll ever do.

For me?It’s nothing compared to what I’ve already survived.

I grew up in a childhood that looked a lot more like Drew Barrymore’s early life than anything close to stable or safe — things no little girl should ever have to endure. But what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right? Or sometimes you feel like what made you stronger is the same thing you wished would’ve killed you… but here I am. And I can laugh about it today because I made it out.

I’m Gen X, a woman who has been working on cars since I was a little girl — long before I understood that engines made more sense than people. Cars were the first place I ever felt steady. Machines don’t lie, don’t judge, and don’t hurt you. You treat a car right, it responds. You ignore it, it shows the truth. That kind of honesty made sense to me.

But addiction?Addiction is a different kind of monster.

Walking out of addiction — climbing out of that pit with my own hands — is the hardest thing I have ever done in my life.

I had boys to raise, sober or not, and I never let go of my responsibility to them. Trying to get clean while surrounded by other addicts felt impossible, but I pushed through it anyway. I got sober alone — no AA, no rehab, no jail forcing me to stop. Just me vs. the darkness.

Here in Utah, a mom on drugs saying, “Can someone help me get clean?” feels like saying, “Please take my kids.”So I did the work myself.And I survived it.

Then I survived cancer during COVID, fighting for my life at the same time the whole world was falling apart. Most people don’t know that part — but it changed me forever. God carried me through battles that should have taken me out.

Through all of it, I found Jesus.I found grace.I found out I was forgiven.

That mix of God’s grace and mercy — plus the gift of the Holy Spirit — is the strongest foundation I have ever stood on.

I’ve been through shelters.I’ve been through trauma.I’ve lived through things most people never could.

And I’m proud — proud of the mom I am, proud of the woman I’ve become, proud of the strength God built inside me through every fire I walked through.

So when people ask me:

“How are you opening a company by yourself?”

Easy.

Starting a business is paperwork and grit.Getting clean is soul work and war.There’s no comparison.

Strong Lady Mechanics wasn’t born because I needed a job.It was born because women deserve a safe place — a shop where we’re respected, not talked down to, not overcharged, and not made to feel stupid for asking questions.

I know what it feels like to have no safe place.I know what it feels like to be scared, to be alone, to rebuild your life from nothing.I know the energy shift that happens when a woman walks into a garage and says she knows cars.

This shop is for women like me —Women who’ve survived life.Women who work hard.Women who love their families fiercely.Women who need someone in their corner for once.

I’m not just opening Strong Lady Mechanics as a business.I’m opening it as a mission:

• A mission to give women a safe environment.• A mission to train other women in a male-dominated industry.• A mission to show the world that you can come out of addiction, trauma, cancer, chaos — and still rise into the woman God created you to be.

This is my next chapter.My comeback story.My testimony.

And the beginning of a community where women finally get the respect, honesty, and empowerment they deserve.

Welcome to Strong Lady Mechanics — where strength is built, not borrowed.And where every woman has a place.