Help me take my story to a worldwide audience.

I was honored to start my journey at Switzerland Fashion week in March 2025. I was invited to Paris while I was there, and have been invited to several other fashion shows including New York Fashion Week in September. I recently had to cancel my trip to Cannes, France for the International Fashion Week, because of lack of donations.

I am so grateful to have been invited to share my story through these dresses, but I do need your help.

This isn’t a success story... yet. It’s a survival story. I’m still here. I’m still struggling deeply with depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts, and I’m still fighting to stay every single day.

The "Unfinished Wings" Collection started on one of many days when I was thinking about leaving this earth. But this day it was completely overpowering. I didn’t believe I could keep going. I started making the wings as a way of marking that moment—a final act, a symbolic gesture of where I was going. But I felt that I couldn’t leave until I finished them. I worked for days and nights until the front of the wings was finished, and for a brief moment, I felt okay—not healed, not fixed, but just enough to stay. I felt excitement to photograph them and share them with others.

I never finished the back of the wings. I left them unfinished because, like me, they were incomplete. Half done. I’m not finished.

Like so many others, I continued to struggle daily with debilitating anxiety and depression. During those most dark days, when thoughts of suicide became overwhelming to me... I pray, I hug my children and husband a little longer, I speak to my therapist, and I turn to creating these "unfinished" dresses.

They weren’t meant to be “fashion.” They are quite impractical, actually. They were meant to keep me going. Each one was deeply personal—made to fit my own body, because as I created them, they became a way to tell my own very personal story. These dresses, like the wings, each have unfinished details or areas. Some are only put together by pins and not fully sewn together. Because, like them, I am not finished.

Each dress takes many days and nights, usually without sleep, just fierce, focused work.

But this isn’t just about me. It’s about all the people who don’t talk about mental health—whether because they feel they’re not “experts,” or they don’t think they have a place in the conversation, or they feel they can’t speak up and share their stories until they’re “better” or until they have a triumphant and inspirational Ted Talk to tell.

There are so many people who, like me, are "in it, not through it." We don’t often speak out because, when its heaviest, its hard to even speak at all, it's completely paralyzing---and it feels like we need to be fixed first. But I believe the voices of those ARE struggling, are the ones who will change the conversations around mental health.

I want to bring those voices to the table. I want to create space for people who are still "in it." You don’t need to be "OK" or have all the answers to speak up. You don’t need to be healed or “through it.” You just need to be here. Your voice matters. People need to understand.

This project, Unfinished Wings, is my way of saying, "I’m still here." "If I can 'Stay,' you can stay." It’s about showing that even when we’re at our very lowest, we can still have purpose. We are resilient. We still have the power to create something beautiful, something meaningful. Maybe not dresses, but in many other ways.

With your help, I can take this collection to New York Fashion Week, and Paris Haute Couture, as well as other local fashion shows I have been invited to. I am honored to have been invited to share my story by showcasing my dresses. I want to share this message with as many people as possible—those who are still struggling, still fighting, still unfinished.

Your support will fund materials for new dresses, help with the extensive costs of designer entry fees to present at fashion weeks, cover air travel costs, luggage fees and accommodations, and allow me to take this project further to other international fashion weeks or local events. It will help me promote this project of hope and inspiration to share it with more people who need to hear this message.

This isn’t about being healed, although that is the end goal. It’s about STAYING. It’s about Carrying On until we find glimmers of light again. It’s about reminding ourselves and the world that we are not finished yet, and our stories are worth telling—even when we’re still in the middle of them.

It’s about helping others see people who struggle with compassion and understanding. And helping those who suffer feel seen and never alone in their darkness.

Anything is so appreciated. Thank you so much!

Love you!

Unfinished Wings: Creating Light in the Midst of Darkness

By Mrs. USA Woman of the Universe

Unfinished Wings: Creating Light in the Midst of Darkness

Help me share a message of hope—support the Unfinished Wings collection and inspire others still fighting their darkest battles

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