Founder's Story

I didn’t create TRU Intention to build a jewelry brand.
I created it because I believe women deserve pieces that carry meaning — pieces that hold intention, protection, and the quiet reminder that they are stronger than they know.

My own healing shaped this brand, but its purpose is to offer women something they can feel in their spirit, not just wear.

I grew up with my mom and my sister — The Giffin Girls — in a home where money was scarce and welfare helped keep us afloat.

Every dollar mattered.
Every meal was stretched.
Nothing came easily.

We weren’t raised on much, but we were raised on resilience and love.

My mom carried her own unhealed wounds while raising two daughters with faith, determination, and the fierce hope that we could rise beyond where we started.

Looking back, I can see that even then, the first threads of generational healing were quietly being woven.

My father moved through my childhood like a ghost — present enough to leave an imprint, absent enough to leave a wound.

He struggled with addiction, violence, and the weight of his own unhealed life, drifting in and out of jail, in and out of our world.

He wasn’t a villain.
He was a broken man who never learned how to stay.

But beneath that absence was real pain.

I experienced trauma in childhood — more than any child should ever have to carry — and those memories resurfaced in my twenties with the force of a tidal wave.

The PTSD was disorienting, overwhelming, and consuming.

It reached a point where I knew I needed help.

So I walked myself into a treatment center — not because someone sent me, but because something inside me whispered:

“You deserve to heal.”

I rebuilt myself piece by piece.

And in time, I became the Executive Director of that same center — guiding women through the very pain, fear, and transformation I had once survived myself.

That was the first time I understood that my healing could help heal others.

Service became my compass.
Purpose became my foundation.

Healing became woven into my identity.

I learned to take my pain and turn it into purpose.

I built a career.
I traveled the world.
I hiked, backpacked, camped — and discovered what it meant to feel powerful in my own body.

I was rising again.

And then, years later, I lost myself in love.

For years, I became a full-time caretaker — emotionally, financially, and physically — pouring every part of myself into someone who ultimately betrayed me.

I lost my joy.
My spark.
My intuition.
My sense of worth.

I disappeared inside a life that was draining me from the inside out.

When it finally broke me, it broke me entirely.

One night, while dog-sitting in someone else’s living room — a house I’d stayed in many times, but which suddenly felt foreign because I felt foreign — I scrolled my phone searching for anything that might ignite even the smallest ember inside me.

And then an ad appeared on my screen.

A retreat in Alaska.

With the words:

“You belong in the wild.”

The moment I saw it, my entire body softened.

My nervous system steadied in a way it hadn’t in months.

Alaska has always been sacred to me — a place where I’ve felt held by something bigger than myself.

Seeing that ad didn’t feel random.

It felt like a calling.

That same weekend, still curled up in that quiet living room, my hand moved almost on its own.

I began designing a tiny bear wrapped around a stone — soft but strong, tender but powerful.

And as I did, other designs began to pour through me.

Pieces inspired by sacred places of healing.
By moments that shaped me.
By the animals, the land, and the energy that had always held me.

That bear became the first piece of She Heals: Alaska — and the true beginning of TRU Intention.

Nature has always been my deepest medicine.

Sleeping under the stars.
Standing in the quiet majesty of Lassen.
Returning to the wild places that rebuilt me.

But when I couldn’t always get back to those sacred places, I needed another way to carry their energy with me.

That’s what led me to stones, gems, and crystals.

What I once felt in the mountains, I began to feel in my hands — the protection of obsidian, the clarity of quartz, the grounded steadiness of smoky stone, the soft healing of moonstone.

I learned that when a stone is carried into a sacred place, it absorbs the energy of that land — and that medicine can be carried forward.

As the designs flowed, so did a realization so strong it felt like a second awakening:

Healing shouldn’t be a privilege.

That’s when TRU Giving was born — the heartbeat of my commitment to give back.

And as these designs continued to come through me, I felt the next chapter of my life take shape.

These pieces don’t just represent healing.

They carry it.

My hope is that every woman who finds TRU Intention finds the piece meant for her.

The truth.
The strength.
The story that matches her soul.

And if she hasn’t found her healing yet, she’s welcome to borrow some of mine.

This is who I am.
This is where I come from.

This is the heart of TRU Intention —
infused with soul, worn with intention.