The Story Behind the Writing

I have always been a creative person, long before I ever had the language for it. Before the job titles, the leadership roles, the digital products, or the engineering work that would one day define so much of my professional life, there was just me. A kid trying to make sense of a world that felt loud, unpredictable, and constantly shifting beneath my feet.

I grew up in a turbulent environment, the kind that teaches you to read the room before you read yourself. The kind that makes you grow up fast. The kind that turns survival into a skill you carry long after you leave the hardest parts behind.

And like many children who learn to adapt early, I found my refuge in structure.

Organizing things wasn’t just something I liked doing. It was the one place where the world made sense. It gave me a sense of calm and control in a life that rarely offered either. It was something that belonged entirely to me, a small place where nothing was unpredictable. That instinct became my anchor.

As I got older, that same sense of structure began to shape everything I touched. It showed up in the way I parent. It showed up in the way I lead. It showed up in the way I build systems at work. It showed up in the rituals I created for myself when life felt overwhelming. And it showed up in the way I healed.

What I didn’t realize for a long time was that the structure I built as a child became the framework for how I support others today.

Before I ever stepped into engineering leadership, I built things in a different way. I had a photography business where I captured light and shadow and emotion and truth. Even then, I was studying people. I was collecting stories through moments, angles, colors, expressions. I was making sense of the world by noticing what most people overlook.

Eventually my path shifted into tech. At first it felt unexpected, but looking back, it makes perfect sense. Technology is just another form of building. Another form of creating clarity inside complexity. Another way of helping people move through their work and their lives with more ease.

Now I lead digital engineering teams. I work in systems and processes and platforms, and every day I see how human those spaces really are. People bring their fears, their hopes, their patterns, their insecurities, their brilliance into the work. Leadership is less about knowing everything and more about understanding people. It is about helping them hold what is heavy. It is about creating space for truth.

Writing, for me, is another extension of that work.

It is how I process the moments that stay with me. It is how I honor the lessons I’ve lived. It is how I give shape to the things I’ve carried. And it is how I offer something back to the world, something that might make someone else feel a little less alone in theirs.

The Living Collection is my way of gathering all of it. The creative child. The organized survivor. The photographer. The engineering lead. The mother. The woman who has walked through fire and softness and everything in between. The human who is still learning every single day.

This space isn’t polished or perfect. It is honest. It is unfolding. It is alive with the parts of me I’ve earned, outgrown, returned to, and reclaimed.

If something in my story meets something in yours, then this space is for you too.

I’m glad you’re here.

Shawna McKenzie