From as young as I can remember, I have soothed myself to sleep by imagining epic stories of heroes, heroines, sorceresses, dragons, angels, and demons. I based my stories on the books and movies I was watching and the narratives that moved and inspired me.

I was as excited and delighted with Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre as I was with Battlestar Galactica (the original TV series). The Mists of Avalon, an Arthurian legend retelling from the point of view of the female characters, had as much effect on me as Cosmos by Carl Sagan.

Later in my life, I discovered that storytelling is one of the most powerful tools to drive change in the world. It creates empathy and compassion, it inspires action, and it helps us make sense of life. As someone that is very interested in making the world a better place, I became interested in storytelling as a powerful ‘weapon’ for good.

Ahe’ey is the first book I published. The first edition of Ahe’ey was originally titled Ange’el.

I’ve been writing this story all my life, mostly inside my head, but also on paper. Gabriel, one of the main characters of Ahe’ey, has lived in my mind since the beginning of time; I was probably five or six when he became my best friend.

I remember the day I discovered feminism. I was reading a book called The Curse of the Good Girl by Rachel Simmons. I had the same adrenaline rush I got when I first discovered brain plasticity, or the first time I read Carl Sagan’s Cosmos.

It was like that moment when you learn something so important that you want to share it with the entire universe; that time when you just can’t help yourself, you go around spreading your new-found wisdom using the largest possible megaphone, because you want others to benefit from it. You completely ignore that some people may not be ready to discover the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Worse, some know about the gold and only want to hide it.

Still, you persevere; you open the book and quote from the passages underlined in fluorescent yellow. The books and the studies are your shield against limiting beliefs, they protect you from the ghost that lurks in some dark corners of your mind—the impostor syndrome. You can’t stop researching, and reading, and watching YouTube videos about the topic. Soon you forget about the girl that wanted to fit in amongst the boys, just another software engineer. The more you learn, the more resolute you become—the media, the marketing, the biases, the privilege, it’s so unfair, all of it.

You talk to others about it at work, you organize groups, and you speak at conferences. You lead, you mentor, you connect, and you learn from others more experienced than you, others kind enough to take you under their wings. And then suddenly you understand your own privilege, and it’s devastating—the white corporate feminism, self-centered, navel gazing, and exclusive. And eventually you look around, really look, and you see it—the systems of privilege; the structures of power. For the first time you see the girl in Congo, the mother in South Sudan, and the boy from Syria.

You see it, you are open and you are raw, and you must do something about it. You lean in for them in a way you’d never be able to lean in for yourself. You must, there is no alternative, they live under the same sky, the only border you recognize, at least until someone finds life in other planets, and then, even that last border will be dismissed.

This is me, and some part of me is Morgan, but like all of my other main characters, she has become her own distinct entity, she has taught me more than I ever imagined.  Her journey is impacting my life as much as my journey defined hers. We are both passionate, idealistic, slightly preachy, and very flawed. She’s much braver and open than I’ll ever be.  We’ll keep learning from each other, we’ll keep growing and hopefully we’ll keep spreading what we learn with the rest of the world, whether they like it or not. Now, where did I leave my megaphone? It was just here a moment ago . . .