The Edge I Stepped Off To Build This

I didn’t plan this.
Not five years ago. Not even three.

I didn’t grow up dreaming of building an archive, or a standard, or a space like this.

But then again, this work doesn’t come to those who are prepared.
It comes to those who are willing.

KINNECT was born in a moment that didn’t look like a moment.
A friend, casually, said they hoped to one day contribute to an archive.
Their words lingered, quietly at first, then louder over time.
It sat at the back of my mind like smoke before a fire.

And then, months later, at a conference, a man’s comment struck a nerve.
He implied that work like mine couldn’t possibly be legitimate if it didn’t sit next to institutions or academic frameworks.
As if credibility must be co-signed by the very systems that often refuse to make space for our truths.

He didn’t mean to provoke purpose.
But he did.

I built KINNECT because I was tired.
Tired of waiting for institutions to make space for wisdom they don’t understand.
Tired of explaining myself to people who hadn’t done the work to meet me.
Tired of holding sacred knowledge in my bones and having nowhere to place it.

So I stepped off the edge.

I didn’t know if I’d be caught.
I only knew I could no longer stand in systems that expected me to shrink.

I have danced between fields: clinical work, education, embodiment, kink.
And yet I’ve always felt on the fringe. Too much for some. Not enough for others.
But the fringe is where the threads are. The seams. The sacred.

KINNECT lives there
where the body meets the divine,
where survival births wisdom,
where lived experience is research.

This isn’t just a project.
It’s a reclamation.

For every practitioner who has held space in a way no textbook could capture.
For every survivor whose knowing was pathologized.
For every offering that didn’t have a place, until now.

This is my commitment:
To make room.
To make it sacred.
To make it ours.

If you’re reading this, you’re part of the unfolding.
I didn’t build this to be seen.
I built it so we could finally see ourselves.