I wrote the Code for my own next chapter.

I was born in 1969 in Seattle, WA. I grew up on mixtapes, came home to an empty house after school and figured things out on my own. Most of us did.

For more than a decade I ran Design Duo Inc., a graphic design, branding and visual communications studio I founded in the ’90s. We helped companies figure out who they were and how to say it.

After Seattle came 12 acres an hour outside Santa Fe, New Mexico. I was minutes from where Georgia O’Keeffe spent the last 40 years of her life, and it’s where I thought I would live for years as a professional artist. But life had other plans for me.

Unexpectedly, I found myself in Orange County, California, married with stepkids. For over a decade, I devoted myself to making sure the businesses, the clients and the family had what they needed.

Then life shifted, right on time.

In the summer of 2026 we became empty nesters. My husband and I moved full time to a mountain property in Southern California, the one I fell in love with in the pouring rain in December 2019. Now I have a studio and a woodworking shop, and I'm learning things I never had time for living in the suburbs.

Heading into this new chapter of my life, I kept asking the same question I hear from so many women my age: Now what?

The Code is my answer. Every rule, every list, every page came from real life: mine, and that of the women I’ve walked beside.

I’m not interested in hype, or in telling you to blow up your life. I believe in strong ideas, small brave steps and doing the thing anyway.

You’re at the beginning of your most important chapter. So am I.

I’m glad you found me.

— Kristen, founder of Epic Life Unlimited