A Letter From Our Founder

I didn’t start First Light because I had all the answers. I started it, because I had all the questions. And for a long time, no one was answering them honestly. I was once a little girl, I was playful. Sensitive. Deeply intuitive. I had a big laugh and a bigger heart. But over time, that softness went away.. by pressure, by pain, by people who told me who I should be, and how I should feel and by moments that made me question whether I mattered at all.

There were four assaults. Four moments that changed everything without saying a word. Moments where I lost ownership of my body, and slowly… of myself. At first, I didn’t even name it trauma. I didn’t want to. I minimized it. Normalized it. Told myself maybe I’d asked for it. And honestly that maybe I was exaggerating. But even when we don’t name trauma, it still speaks. And for me, it spoke through hypersexuality. Through performing. Through people pleasing and not being able to set boundaries, through attracting the wrong people. Through hookups that looked like empowerment or freedom and felt like hollow survival, an escape of the discomfort of reality.

I became the girl I thought would finally be wanted. The one who said yes when she meant no. The one who smiled through the pain. The one who told herself she was empowered… when really, she was slowly chipping away at her sense of self and self worth. All different types of therapy helped. Hypnosis changed things. Somatic work and inner child healing opened doors I didn’t know existed. But the turning point wasn’t just healing. It was responsibility. It was looking in the mirror and finally saying: “I didn’t cause my trauma, but I am responsible for what I do with it now.”

I realized no man, no hookup, no compliment, no curated identity online could save me or fill that void inside of me. I had to choose to come back home to myself. And it wasn’t easy. It took grief. It took honesty. It took questioning myself in the mirror and It took walking away from the girl I had performed into being and who I knew so well. But piece by piece, I remembered who I was before the world told me who to become and before pain controlled me unknowingly.

That’s why I created First Light. Because I know I’m not the only one. So many women are stuck in the same in between: Where therapy isn’t enough, hookup culture is hollow and makes you feel emptier than before, and empowerment feels more like exhaustion. We speak the language of healing, and this society does it well but we don’t always live it. We validate each other’s pain, but we rarely challenge each other to grow, and I mean really grow. We’ve been told to be seen, to be validated, to be popular but we were never taught how to be safe, truly be safe.

First Light is the space I needed. It’s the light I needed at my lowest of points. It’s not just about awareness. It’s about ownership. It’s not about shaming women for how they’ve coped, or judging them for their lifestyle, because they may not be aware that something is wrong. It’s about helping them reclaim the self they lost along the way. We help women recognize what’s not working. Guide them as their First Light. We walk with them through the discomfort of change. We build sisterhood around truth, sometimes its truth that’s isn’t pleasant but it the truth not just affirmation. First Light is the first mirror. The first step. Maybe the First Light you needed.

The first quiet moment when a woman says, “I think I’m ready to come back to myself.” Or “I am ready to look into the mirror, even if it hurts” In a world where feminine power is confused with performance, and external factors, where hookup culture gets glamorized, and seen as women power and where therapy language is often used to avoid true responsibility,

First Light offers something different. The kind of support that doesn’t just feel good, or sound good but actually helps you grow and helps you stop harmful cycles keeping you in a constant state of stress.

- Luise Borner