The Venue Changed. The Mission Didn't.

I have a confession to make….

When I was 15 years old, I played Magenta in a Rocky Horror Picture Show shadow cast.

I was a punk rock kid looking for a place to belong. I found it in the most countercultural place imaginable.

Our group was called the Wild and Untamed Things, or WUT. I actually came up with the name. And, as is the running theme of my life, I quickly ended up in leadership.

Looking back, it is easy to giggle at the risqué callback lines and the absolute theater of it all. My husband certainly cannot relate to the soundtrack I still play to this day. But when I look past the costumes and the crude language, I see exactly what WUT actually was.

It was a sanctuary.

It was a room full of weird, brilliant, neurodivergent kids who did not fit into the standard boxes the world had built for them. We were all just trying to find our way, and we found it by building a subculture where we were allowed to be exactly who we were, without masking and without shame.

It was where I learned to be fully myself in front of a room full of people.

There was no judgment. No shame. Just acceptance.

I eventually outgrew the scene, but I never outgrew the mission.

Today, I am the CEO of Pistachio Pay. I trade pitch decks instead of props, and I sit in boardrooms and Zoom calls instead of movie theaters. But the core drive is exactly the same.

I am still building safe spaces for neurodivergent adults. I am still looking at a world that tells us we are too much, too chaotic, or too different, and I am still building a system where we can thrive without shame.

The venue changed. The mission didn’t.

Let’s do the time warp again.
🎥🍿🎸🍞