It's a coming-of-age story. She just happens to be 56.
Good daughter. Good (ex)wife. Good mother. Good employee. Good girl.
At what point do you get to be you?
GROOMED
One woman’s darkly funny, deeply human attempt to untangle love from control, resilience from survival, and who she really is from who she was taught to be.
A dynamic 50-minute one woman show coming to a theater (or church basement) near you in 2026. Help us prep the show for FRINGE 2027.
Engaging Q&A, talk-backs, and real conversations follow each show.
Please email us for booking or to request tour information.
The stories we inherit, the roles we’re assigned, and what happens when we stop playing along
She was relinquished at birth in 1970, adopted as a teenager, and brought home from the hospital in a tiny pink outfit with a banner across it that read “Miss America." Yes she still has the outfit. It’s on the stage. Next to Frank’s guitar. You'll have to see the show to hear about Frank. And how could a show about searching for home not include Nashville and some original songs? (Co-written by award-winning female song-writers.)
Clearly, she took the assignment to be “good enough” very seriously.
At age 26 she actually became Miss Iowa 1997.
Coincidence? Destiny?
Or one hell of a metaphor?
From pageant stages to live television, marriage and motherhood to divorce and sudden loss, corporate America to a six-year detour that may or may not have involved what is rumored to be a cult, she became exceptionally good at one thing:
Being who everybody needed her to be.
And life rewarded her for it.
Until it didn't.
After a marriage filled with events so unbelievable they have to be true, she survived a drawn out divorce only to have her ex-husband die in a hiking accident four months later.
(Yes, he literally fell off the face of the earth and no, you're not the first to think of it. And it's been confirmed she was miles away and had nothing to do with it.)
She kept going.
GROOMED follows the "middle one" of three generations of women
She raised a daughter on her own. Sold millions of dollars of products on television. Went back to school to finish a PhD. Left the aforementioned rumored-to-be-a-cult. Then, as recommended by the experts, she tried bringing curiosity, vulnerability and authenticity to her sales job in Corporate America. The place that welcomed her to the family on the internet.
Naturally, she got fired.
Over 50, dissertation unfinished, drowning in debt and with most of her possessions sold on Facebook marketplace, the woman who had spent a lifetime holding everything together finally couldn't.
Forty years too late, records arrived in the mail proving her court appointed guardians and adoptive parents didn't tell the truth about her biological family and her situation.
Her entire life and identity—even her legal NAME —had been built around half truths, gaslighting and "cover stories" for other people.
And that's when our story gets more interesting.
A twist of fate sends her back to North Carolina where she gave up a graduate teaching assistantship to get married in 1998. (We know how that decision worked out).
She meets a business investor and good Samaritan on a golf course. This leads to a sad, happy, messy, funny, and occasionally unbelievable (but true)—journey of raveling, unraveling, and healing. Basically, perfect material for a one-woman show. Hence, they created this one.
Our Gen X protagonist ends up traveling cross-country in Grace the Grey Van. She crashes on the sofa of her biological mother in California—a former Miss Gackle pageant winner and retired addiction recovery counselor— she then sleeps on the sofa of her adult daughter in Minneapolis during the tragic community events of 2025. At this point, her daughter works as a radio personality and is a recovery advocate a few years sober after leaving NYC post college graduation to attend in-patient treatment at the most famous center in the land of 10,000 lakes. 2020 was hard on a lot of families. Just ask Hazelden Betty Ford.
Part memoir, part investigation, part reclamation
And then, her daughter enters a Miss America preliminary pageant.
History (and generational "stuff") begins to repeat. Is there a chance to change the outcome?
Her daughter is speaking about substance misuse and addiction recovery as her public platform. She's saying the quiet part out loud. In a sparkly gown and high heels. And on the internet.
As they say substance use disorder is a family disease.
Three generations of women. Three different versions of survival and cycle-breaking. And "the middle one" faces a really inconvenient question:
How much of your identity did you actually choose?
GROOMED untangles love from control, achievement from approval, and resilience from survival while asking something that isn't really about pageants, adoption, marriage, work—or even cults.
It's about all of us who got really good at becoming what somebody else needed.
Because maybe you weren't born a people-pleaser.
Maybe you weren't born an overachiever.
Maybe you weren't born believing you had to hold everything together.
Maybe you learned what worked to survive. Or did OTHER PEOPLE learn what worked to get you to abandon yourself?
Have you ever looked at your own life and wondered,
“How the hell did I get here?”
GROOMED was written for you too.
If the story you were given about who you're supposed to be isn't true...
Who do you get to become now?
Support our movement to empower women and girls
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The funds raised from donatiobracelets will support production of the national tour of "Groomed". A show about motherhood, identity and why women matter even if you aren't one.
1% of all funds raised will be donated to "Moms First" a 501(c)3 building a national movement to support and empower moms across the country.