MY STORY

I was born on December 28th, 1976, in Kapsukas, Lithuania — a small industrial town whose very name would change when the Soviet regime collapsed in 1990. I was thirteen when that happened. Old enough to understand that the world I had been born into was not permanent. That nothing is.

My parents were 21 when I was born. We lived in a room assigned to us by the milk factory where they worked. It was enough. It was home.

My father's mother had a farm in the village of Jusevičiai that needed tending — animals, hay, massive vegetable gardens that seemed to have no end. My father was the only son and lived closest, so nearly every weekend the three of us girls went with him to help. It was just us and the work.

I remember standing at the beginning of a vegetable row knowing I couldn't see where it ended. Knowing my friends were outside playing somewhere. We worked anyway. You did what needed to be done.

That is where my work ethic comes from. I am not afraid to roll up my sleeves. I never have been.

I studied business administration at Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas, and came to the United States twice during my university summers to work and travel. I fell in love with the possibility of it — the scale, the openness, the sense that a life here could be built rather than inherited.

In 1998, after graduating, I came for good.

I arrived in Ocean City, Maryland, in the summer. I knew no one. Everything I owned fit in one bag. I worked as a waitress. I worked retail. I figured it out alone — which is the only way I have ever known how to figure anything out. It was also where I met Dane.

He was my first love — deep, genuine, someone who truly saw me at a time when I couldn't yet see myself clearly. He made it possible for me to stay in this country and build a life here. I was in a rush to become something, and he was steadier, slower, more patient than I knew how to appreciate then. I carry gratitude for him. He deserved more than I knew how to give at that age.

Dane passed away at forty. He never remarried. He never had children. I think about that. I think about him. I am forever grateful how he made my American life possible.

By 2002 I had found a real job at a pension fund in Alexandria,VA. I lasted one year. I read Rich Dad Poor Dad, decided to try real estate, and got my license in 2003. I sold one house my first year. I loved the actual job completely. I knew immediately it was it.

I started at Coldwell Banker in Old Town Alexandria, then moved to Long & Foster in McLean to work alongside Lillian Jorgenson — a woman who showed me what this work could truly be. In 2005 I transferred to Arlington. I sold my first listing. I have not left Arlington since.

In 2010 I met Jan — a home stager who has been my collaborator ever since. Around the same time something began to crystallize — that how a home looks and feels is not separate from how it sells. That the emotional and the practical are not opposites. That this work, done right, is about far more than property.

That same year I married again.

My son Odin was born in 2012. My daughter Athena in 2014.

In 2017 everything shifted at once. I moved into my condo in Arlington — the one with the sunset views I still love. I flew to Lisbon for Alain de Botton's School of Life seminar, and something opened that has not closed since. My marriage ended that year. Both the separation and the divorce fell on March 4th. March forth. I have thought about that many times since.

I chose to stay in Arlington. I chose to stay in this work. I chose to go deeper rather than wider. Every choice felt like a threshold.

Over the years that followed the philosophy crystallized. I began to understand that what I had been doing for twenty years had a name. That every move is a crossing. That every home holds a life. That the people who come to me are not looking for an agent — they are looking for someone who will stand with them in the most difficult moment of transition and know what to do.

I call this threshold work.

In 2025 my neighbor Jim passed away at 82. He had already named her — a 1987 Mercedes SL560 convertible. Astral. He wanted me to have her. I inherited the car and the name both. That same year I joined RLAH Real Estate and began writing seriously for the first time. I launched Letters from a Threshold on Substack — essays and field notes about the moments in between, the ones that don't always have clear answers.

This is my 23rd year.

I am raising Odin and Athena in Arlington — the city I chose, the life I built from nothing. I believe in Hygge — the Danish art of making a home that holds you. I find restoration in vast landscapes and melancholy music. I drive a 1987 Mercedes convertible named Astral — inherited from my neighbor Jim, who saw something in me worth trusting. I am, at my core, a woman of the in-between — belonging fully to neither the country I came from nor the one I chose, and at peace with that. More than peace. I have made it the foundation of everything.

I carry people through thresholds.

Because I know what it is to cross alone.

PHOTOGRAPHS‍ ‍BOOKS THAT CHANGED ME‍ ‍MY SUBSTACK‍ ‍MY AUNT’S ART