Breakthrough Story ~ · New Earth Community

Breakthrough Story ~

Before

I’ve always been super connected to the creator within me . I loved to draw, make things, and especially design fashion looks. My love for design wasn’t about knowing every brand or reading Vogue, it was about how different colours, textures, and personalities came alive through looks.

But the way I was raised contrasted with that passion. Like most kids, I wanted to dress myself and express freely, but I was taught not to stand out. Growing up in a Greek household, that came from a place of love protecting me from judgment, gossip, and evil eye. The message was clear: dress respectfully, don’t do too much.

Crisis

Working hard at university, I got accepted into a semester abroad at one of the world’s most renowned fashion schools, FIT in New York. Living there, learning from incredible creatives, and being surrounded by the artistic pulse of the city cracked something open in me. I was relearning that it's safe to express yourself, and it is encouraged.

Coming back home to Melbourne, though, I felt empty. It was as if I’d taken ten steps forward and twenty steps back. I felt unaligned with my hometown, my environment, even the life I thought I was supposed to want. Deep down, I knew I wasn’t meant to just stay put, get a job, and play it safe.

Chase

After finishing my bachelor’s degree back home, I was determined to move back to New York. Then Covid hit.

I refused to let that stop my momentum. I started taking fashion content creation seriously. Styling outfits and shooting content consistently. I also interned with a start-up to understand the business side of building a brand. Even in lockdown, I stayed in motion, building toward my dream in the industry and gaining the knowledge and experience I needed.

Conflict

That experience taught me a harsh but defining truth not everyone who appears successful deserves your trust.

The person I had interned for, someone I deeply admired, saw the drive and creativity in me and took advantage of it. He positioned himself as a mentor, convincing me that I needed his approval to succeed, while slowly crossing lines that should never have been crossed. What began as admiration turned into control.

When I left, I was completely stripped of confidence — disconnected from the creative fire that once defined me. I stopped creating altogether. I didn’t want anything to do with fashion, with content, or even the version of myself that used to dream so boldly.

Inside, I was screaming for help, but on the outside, I was in complete denial about how lost I’d become. That’s when something or maybe someone greater called me toward healing. I picked up Joe Dispenza’s Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself, and that book cracked open a door inside me I didn’t know existed.

That was the beginning of my first real spiritual awakening. And like all awakenings, it wasn’t all light and clarity. It was messy. Lonely. A deep unraveling. For years, I wrestled with my identity, my confidence, and my purpose on this earth. I didn’t yet know it, but that darkness was preparing me for rebirth.

Breakthrough

In 2023, after a few years of feeling disconnected from myself, I decided to do something about it. I booked a solo trip to Europe. I spent nearly all my savings on it, but deep down, I knew it wasn’t just a holiday. It was a soul mission.

Traveling alone (for most part) reconnected me to my essence. I felt alive again, observing the world with new eyes, noticing beauty in textures, architecture, and moments of stillness. Somewhere along my trip I started to remember the artist within me. Not the one chasing validation, but the one who creates from truth.

When I returned home, I followed that pull. I started sewing lessons and taught myself how to crochet. No patterns, just me, a hook, and yarn. It became a form of meditation, a dialogue between my hands and my heart. Every piece I created felt like another layer of my healing as if I was weaving the energy I had held in my sacral and solar plexus into art.

For the first time in years, I was creating again not for the industry, not for approval but for me.

After

Building my brand, Neo by Kat, has been the most transformative experience of my life.

For so long, I dreamt of being a designer, but I never truly believed I could do it on my own terms. Now, I am. Each piece I create is a love letter to the parts of myself I once abandoned expressive, sensual, spiritual, free. My work reminds me why I fell in love with fashion in the first place. It’s not about trends or validation; it’s about storytelling how an outfit makes you feel, where it takes your imagination, the poetry it carries.

Every 1-of-1 design tells its own story a symbol of transformation, like a snake shedding its skin, a caterpillar becoming a butterfly, or a bird taking its first leap from the nest. Each piece is an artistic expression from God herself.

Through crochet, I’ve not only reconnected to my craft, but to my entire creative being. It opened me back up to everything that makes me an artist: painting, drawing, designing. It’s as though reconnecting to one thread of creativity awakened all the others that were waiting to be remembered.

If I could share one piece of advice with anyone starting their creative journey, it would be this: never box yourself into one form of expression. Pick up the brush, the guitar, the crochet hook even if you’re terrible at it at first. Be curious, be bold, be a student of art. There’s no such thing as “bad art.” Creation is how we remember our souls. When you surrender to it, you open the heart’s portal to a new realm one where you finally meet your truest self.

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