After a Life-Changing Diagnosis and Housing Insecurity, I’ve Found 6 Ways to Make Anywhere Feel Safe

I received a Dolce & Gabbana moka pot as a birthday gift from my cousin for my 46th birthday — but I’ve only used it once, in a borrowed kitchen. Now it sits in storage, waiting for a stove of my own. That’s because since 2019, I’ve been without a permanent address; I’ve been living in Airbnbs, hotels, and borrowed spaces. Over the years, though, I’ve learned that home is less of a physical space and more of a feeling you create. 

I was able to discover that “feeling” when I became a chef at age 32. The professional kitchen was more than a place where I did my job; it was my anchor, and it felt like home in every sense. I loved the rhythm of the line, the press of restaurant heat that soaks into your skin and stays there, the fleeting moment when a plate leaves your hands and becomes someone’s memory.

The work was hard. My body’s unraveling crept in quietly. I began to experience increasing joint pain, days where my feet could barely bear weight, a fatigue that sleep couldn’t fix, and brain fog that made the precision of the kitchen feel harder to hold. Years of silent symptoms and no clear diagnosis had been dismantling me and my health before I even knew what I was losing, and it forced me off the chef’s line and into a new role at 40 years old in 2020. 

Losing the kitchen wasn’t just losing a job — I was losing the first place where I had ever felt like myself. Without it I had to figure out who I was when the thing that made sense of me was no longer available, and discover a new sense of home and belonging.

By 2019, I had found a new anchor in food storytelling. My podcast launched and won a TASTE Award, and I was contributing to food publications and hosting cooking classes. For the first time since leaving the line, something was building.

In January 2020, I drove from Phoenix to Boston for a job at America’s Test Kitchen. But the pain made it impossible to stay. I walked away from that job, made my way to New York City, and landed in Harlem with my sister just as COVID-19 shut the world down. My writing and podcast gained real traction.

By early 2022, back in Phoenix, my resources were nearly gone. I cycled through Airbnbs and borrowed spaces until I ran out of options. My cousin offered me a soft landing — I stayed with her family for nearly two years. The pain kept intensifying.

I left her home in summer 2023 ready to start fresh. Then in August, I had a heart attack. That’s when everything finally had a name: Vascular Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (vEDS) — a connective tissue disorder, the most severe subtype of EDS. Where other forms affect joints and skin, vEDS compromises the walls of arteries, organs, and the heart itself. Vessels that should be elastic become fragile and prone to spontaneous rupture.

The symptoms had been present for years — the joint pain, fatigue, reduced mobility, rashes, brain fog — but no one had connected them into a complete picture. I had been pushing through undiagnosed, attributing everything to overwork, stress, bad luck, and feet that just wouldn’t cooperate. The genetics test that finally gave it a name came more than a decade after my body had started trying to tell me something was wrong. 

There is no cure. Management means constant vigilance — monitoring, medication, and learning to navigate a medical system that still treats vEDS as rare enough to be unfamiliar. A diagnosis gives you a map of the wreckage, but not a roof. Survival became an aesthetic directive: If my body is fragile, my environment must be intentional. 

The summer before my heart attack, I watched my sister, working as a child wrangler on the Tina Turner Broadway tour, turn every hotel room she stayed in into a home within minutes. She brought her own lamp, pillowcase, and a plug-in of her favorite scent. She stored clothes in the drawers and arranged small objects just so. It didn’t matter how many cities she moved through. The ritual is held every time.

My sister and I spent much of 2024 moving from place to place together — off and on, wherever we could afford to land — and that ritual held fast in every single room. It didn’t matter if it was an Airbnb, a renovated RV, or a hotel with questionable carpet. She unpacked. She arranged. She made it home. I followed her lead and built my own ritual. Here’s what every space I stay in needs to have — even if it’s not a permanent one.

On hard days, a single flight of stairs can mean choosing between getting to my room and having enough energy left to do anything once I’m there. For me, a misstep on a staircase isn’t a minor inconvenience — it’s a potential emergency. 

I once stayed in a beautifully renovated Airbnb, but it turned into a tragedy after I lost my footing in the shower and went down hard on my knee. I ended up in the ER with skyrocketing blood pressure. A grab bar would have cost less than that hospital visit, and it doesn’t have to look clinical. Matte black, brushed brass, and architectural chrome — the options exist, and they’re beautiful. Now, I travel with a portable nonslip mat just in case, but functional beauty should be the baseline, not something I haul in my suitcase.  

Because I have vEDS and my joints partially dislocate without warning, a mattress that doesn’t provide real support means waking up in more pain than I went to sleep in. Additionally, because I also have mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS), I need a clean bed free of allergens, dust, or danger. A dusty room can trigger a full systemic response. 

I can’t stand or sit for long, so those deep, armless sofas that look stunning in listing photos are nearly impossible for my body to navigate. Getting in is a project; getting out is even harder. I need structured chairs with arms, surfaces at the right height, and a kitchen where a stool can pull close to the counter when my body allows me to cook when I want or am able to.

This one didn’t exist on my list before my heart attack in 2023. Now it’s the first tab I open. How far is the nearest emergency room? How long does it take to get to my doctors’ offices? Is there a Waymo route that gets me there if I can’t drive? I have learned, the hard way, that a beautiful space in a remote location is a liability when your body can escalate from manageable to emergency in under an hour. 

The silk pillowcase is always first — a small luxury that whispers, you’re safe here. A little plant, usually a pothos, finds its place by the window. A Bath & Body Works wallflower. (Scent is my quickest way to claim a space; it transforms the air into something chosen, not inherited.) Then my Yzma Funko Pop, the villain from The Emperor’s New Groove, voiced by my spirit guide, Eartha Kitt — brilliant, unbothered, and gloriously indifferent to anyone’s judgment. I also bring these essentials: air filter, humidifier, fan, soft pajamas, and slippers. 

Right now, I’m staying with another relative in Arizona, sleeping in a recliner, waiting on a disability hearing that could be another nine to 12 months away. I write and produce podcasts when I can. It’s not a lot of money, and it isn’t consistent, but it covers groceries and small costs, and it’s all I have. I’m working on my first novel for the same reason. It keeps me tethered.

I don’t know when I’ll have a stove to put that moka pot I got on my birthday. What I know is that the silk pillowcase, the pothos on a windowsill, and the Yzma Funko Pop on a borrowed nightstand aren’t about what’s coming — they’re how I remember that this moment, however uncertain, is worth making beautiful. Vascular Ehlers-Danlos rewrites my body every day. Housing insecurity is still a problem I’m trying to solve, but my home vision is intact, uncompromised, unapologetically specific. And I’m still here.