I grew up in Freehold, New Jersey, with my mom, dad, sister and brother. We lived in a beautiful white house with black shutters that had a big back yard and a pool. It was part of a cul-de-sac that had many growing young families that my sister, brother and I would play with in the streets. 

Jersey is where my childhood memories took place, the happy ones anyway. It was where my mom would bundle my sister, brother and myself up in snow suits and face masks, to play outside in the frigid, snowy winters. It was going to my Aunts house for holidays and seeing my grandma and all of my aunts, uncles and cousins. Jersey was going to the beach on the weekends and eating pizza that you just can't find anywhere else; it was eating bagels and tailored ham on Sunday mornings; it was when I enjoyed going to school and studying (that is how you know it was a LONG time ago); it was going to the park each day after school to hangout with my friends until it was dark outside; it was where I went to camp each summer; it was where my friendships blossomed; it was where I remember feeling weightless, completely free with no worries,not a care in the world, not an ounce of responsibility. Jersey was my home. Jersey will always hold a special place in my heart for those memories.

I didn't know it then, but when I was 12 years old, the world as I knew it was about to change. My parents told my brother and I that we would be moving. They only told us two because my sister wasn't moving with us. She stayed with her friend and finished high school in Jersey. My dad worked for Ford, and the company was shutting down in Jersey but offered to transfer us to another location. That location, out of all the places in the U.S, was Kentucky. Of course my initial reaction was to cry. I cried about leaving my family and my friends and I mourned the loss of the memories I described.

One day during the hot summer of 2005 before I started the seventh grade, we drove 12 hours to our new " home".  It didn't feel like home. When I started school, I didn't make any friends that year, or for the next several. The way the teachers taught was completely different and I fell behind. The passion that I once had for studying and going to school had quickly burned out. Although I had a hard time adjusting and making friends, my brother, being the natural athlete that he is, made tons of connections through football and wrestling. He even got into bodybuilding. I would be lying if I said it wasn't hard for me from 12 to 19 years of age. I didn't enjoy or do well in school, I didn't fit in and at a certain point, I stopped trying. It felt like a part of me was missing.

It was September, 2012, when out of the blue, a man came into the local Penn Station I worked and asked me if I had ever considered competing in bodybuilding. I told him I actually had considered it after watching my brother do well at his competitions, but I didn't know where to start and I had never weight lifted before. He graciously offered to train me, free of charge, as long as I competed in a show. This random kind man, Fred Reeves, went on to become my bodybuilding competition coach. He had a group of two other girls, Brittany and Lara, who I began to train alongside at the first gym I ever became a member of: Better Bodies (also where I would go on to meet my future husband!).

I would meet with Fred and the girls 4 or 5 times a week, learning how to lift and diet properly. When I first started, lifting as little as 10 pounds was a task that wore out my body to exhaustion, and eating a strict clean diet made my face cringe each time I took a bite of the 6 meals I ate a day. However, as time went by, lifting those 10 pounds wasn't so hard on me anymore, and that diet that once made me cringe was no longer so hard to swallow. Before long, I was squatting more than my body weight at 185 lbs. My leg press was always the most impressive, maxing out at 600 pounds. I watched my body change, I watched myself become stronger. I saw my discipline and dedication grow deeper, and my passion develop. My love for the gym, weight lifting, health and being a part of this group was maturing. Each day after work, I would go straight to the gym with focus and determination to train with Fred, Lara and Brittany. We would spend hours training, sweating and preparing for our competition.  For the first time in a long time, I finally felt like I was home.

After months of training, posing, prepping and eating a strictly planned out competition diet, I was ready for my show. It was April, 2013. It was the night I fell in love with bodybuilding. I didn't place at my competition, but there is no other achievement in my life that was as rewarding as walking on stage and showing off 8 months of my blood, sweat and tears. 

While I was working toward the bodybuilding competition, I was also in college working towards an Associate’s Degree in criminal justice. School was still something I did to appease my parents more than anything; I didn't have a passion or interest in school. All of my attention and dedication was invested in bodybuilding. I even took a few semesters off to focus on training. After my first competition, i was back at the gym to train for a second show. I increased my weight on a deadlift exercise and I broke my L5 vertebrae, and was diagnosed with ithmic spondylolisthesis and nerve damage in my right leg. I was put in a back brace and unable to workout for a year. I had just turned 21. It was extremely difficult to deal with living without my passion, but life has a funny way of giving you what you need, even when you don't understand it. I was forced to focus on school and work. I was working as a veterinarian technician, as a cook at a restaurant, and as a Hooters waitress. One day, I was messaged on Facebook by a local photographer, asking me to do a modeling photo shoot because he had seen some of my competition photos. I took him up on his offer and discovered a new passion: modeling. I shot with several photographers, did multiple workshops, and even went on to be featured in two magazines that are sold across the country. It became a fourth source of income as well as a passion. Modeling certainly took my mind off my unfortunate physical situation and allowed me to come to terms with it. 

I continued to work four jobs, for two years, and I’m just now finishing my last semester for my Associate’s Degree. I joke that it's my four-year two-year degree. My parents don't find it as funny as I do! I'm often asked what is next for me, what will I do with my degree, or with bodybuilding and modeling. My answer is very simple: I have found a man that I love. A man who has made me feel like I am finally at home. Someone who i can look forward to making new memories with. A man who has given me a life that I couldn't have even dreamed. I plan to invest fully in him, and return the love he gives to me. I plan to travel and explore the world alongside him. I plan to create a place that reflects our love, and I plan to manage our household and have a family. I do plan to compete and model again at some point in the future.  I've found my home and I'm ready to settle down and enjoy it with the man who makes it come to life! 

I was born in Brazil, South America, in a commerce-focused city called Itabuna, but never lived there. Instead, I lived 30 minutes away, on a quasi-island called Ilhéus, in the state of Bahia, on the Atlantic coast of the country. My family, a traditional one, comes from a rich Italian and Portuguese heritage; the Tourinho family is one singular family all over the world, tracing its lineage to a single source. The Tourinhos are a proud and hardworking bunch, and known throughout the country as a unique and influential family.

My father was the youngest of 4 siblings, and the only one that chose to leave the family business and seek his own path in life. As an academic, upon graduating from the Federal University of Amazonas, he left Brazil in his 20s and, with the family in tow, sought to obtain a Master’s Degree from IICA in San Rosé, Costa Rica, in 1976. Upon completing his Master’s, the family moved again in 1977 to Madison, Wisconsin, so my father could pursue his life-long dream of a Ph.D.  Although I was born in Brazil, my first memory involves me speaking English, what I consider to be my native tongue.

I had a fantastic childhood. My memories include traveling all across the U.S. with my sister, Mabel (in the back of our Plymouth station wagon, unbuckled, playing board games) to visit my older “sister” Regina in West Lafayette, Indiana, where she attended college and graduated from Purdue University. We would often visit friends in other states, and one year, we crossed the northeast to link up with my father’s good friend, who was attending Columbia University in New York, to see Niagara Falls and visit Montreal and Quebec in Canada. That was when my passion for languages was born. I wanted to communicate with people, and if they did not speak English, such as the residents of French-speaking Canada, I wanted to be able to speak their language. Regina was not my biological sister, but her parents had sent her to live with us in Bahia as an early teen in order to obtain a better education; her parents lived in a poor area of Brazil, and studying in Bahia was a much better option. She raised me from birth, and helped my mother with “motherly” chores. She currently lives in Atlanta, Georgia, and my term of endearment for her is “Aichy” because, as a child, I couldn’t pronounce her name for some reason. I still call her Aichy, and she is by all measures my sister, along with my two "nieces" Calina, a lawyer, and Alicia, who works in the corporate world for Jimmy John's as a financial/accountant expert. Mabel lives in Brasilia, the Capital of Brazil, with her husband Sidney and their two children Isadora and Isaac. Mabel is a corporate executive lawyer who overseas the Brasilia International Airport, and her husband Sidney is a top cardiac surgeon who directs a cardiac unit in a major hospital in Brasilia. My mother lives there as well and thoroughly enjoys retirement and her grandchildren.

Speaking of mothers, I had an amazing one. While my father was dedicating his life to academic pursuits, and succeeding very much so in them, my mother was a homemaker tending to her family in every possible way. She was way ahead of her time in many ways, and would often exercise the most clear and amazing judgment regarding how to raise us kids. My sisters and I love our mother very much, and the man I am is due to her devotion and upbringing.

My father’s successes are too numerous to count: a multi-published author, a university founder and President, and a recognized expert and researcher in his field of Sociology. I am proud of my father’s accomplishments. But mostly, I am proud that he was, and remains, a great father. He lives in Belém, in the state of Pará, in the Amazon region, with his wife Dora, and my little sister Manuela, who recently passed the Brazilian Bar and is now a lawyer like our sister Mabel. My love for academia, learning and reading is thanks to him, a love that I have passed on to my two children.

Upon attaining his Ph.D. in 1982, the family moved back to Ilhéus, Brazil. By then, I was thoroughly American. I no longer was able to read or write in Portuguese, and barely spoke it. My return to Brazil was a nightmare: I did not fit in, had to sit a year out of school so my parents could place me under the tutelage of a private Portuguese teacher to relearn the language, and I felt that I had been ripped apart from my friends and the place I knew as my home in Shorewood, Madison. I was a terrible student, and did not care to fit in. I rebelled at every chance I had, especially considering that, once I had relearned Portuguese, I was placed in a Catholic Convent boarding school. It wasn’t until we moved again, this time to Brasilia, that I accepted my fate as a Brazilian. I began to do better in school but jumped at the opportunity to become an exchange student and complete my secondary education in the U.S.  I was placed with a family in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, until I graduated from high school in 1991. As a high school student I fared much better, and even graduated with honors. I also played soccer and track and field. I was awarded a soccer scholarship and graduated with a B.A. in Political Sciences with an emphasis on international relations and a minor in French from Morehead State University (MSU) in 1996.

I was a busy college student. I didn’t dedicate much time for dating, and instead opted to be involved with the Student Government Association (SGA) and other academic groups. I was a Member-at-Large of the Cosmopolitan Club and a member of the French Club. I was elected a Residence Hall Association representative as well as a student body representative with a seat on SGA. On top of my academic responsibilities, I also played soccer for the university and was the team’s captain for the last two years at MSU, and also volleyball on my off-season for the club team. To add insult to injury, I worked two part-time jobs off-campus and one work-study job on campus to make ends meet. I was a Therapeutic Child Support Specialist with the Presbyterian Child Welfare Agency and an Arby’s front-line worker while off-campus, and an archives student helper and a student police escort for the last two years while on-campus. My goal was to graduate without debt, and I was happy to accomplish that goal.       

I have always been my own person. Although my father would have preferred that I become a doctor, my passion was simply not in it. As a college student, I tried pre-med for a year, only to realize my passion was in politics and political systems, and not in cutting people open or dealing with the sick. I wanted to help others in more indirect ways, and attempt to understand and change systems from within. Having come from a country that until 1985 was ruled by a dictatorship, I valued democracy more than any other field of study. I recall watching my father sob tears of joy for having voted for president for the first time in his life in the late 80s. I remember the stories about how he feared being taken away by the Brazilian government due to his direct support for the underground university student-led “Diretas Já” movement, which protested the dictatorship and fought for rights. I lived a dictatorship, and because of it I will always defend the great republic that is the United States.

Upon graduating from college with honors, I returned to Brazil in the hopes of better understanding my roots. While there, from 1996 to 1999, I built homes for the poor with organizations such as Habitat for Humanity, and taught English to underprivileged children in the hopes of giving them an edge out of poverty. In order to make money, I taught English to top executives in Brasília and at a private English school. I had no car and lived in an apartment the size of an egg. But, that time allowed me to better understand who I was and the makeup of my character.

By the end of 1999, I was ready to return to the U.S.  Now married and living in eastern Kentucky, I was a high school teacher in the area of Social Studies and a girls volleyball coach. Then 9/11 happened and I felt compelled to serve the county I had called my own for so long. In 2000 I resigned from my teaching position and enlisted in the Army. The only condition of enlistment I requested from the recruiter was that I be placed on the front-lines, and not be sitting behind a desk somewhere in the back. The recruiter gladly obliged and sent me to Fort Benning, Georgia  - Home of the Infantry. I was part of a select group of guys that went through a specialized training called OSUT (One-Station Unit Training) due to the type of job we were all hired to do as Infantrymen. From Basic Training, to Advanced Infantry Training, to Airborne School, Ft. Benning was a one-stop shop for grunts. Upon completion of my training, I was sent to Fort Bragg, North Carolina – Home of the Airborne and Special Operations Command - and from there I deployed to Iraq in 2003 to open up that can of worms in areas such as Fallujah, As Samawah and Baghdad. My unit was part of the first wave of ground units crossing into Iraq during the beginning of the war. In 2005 I was deployed to Afghanistan and operated in the Helmand Province, mostly, while using Kandahar as our home base. Although those are the two major operations I was involved in, I was deployed to other regions as well. Upon completion of my term of enlistment, I finally felt like I had earned my right to be called an American. In 2006 I left the Army proud of my service, and aware that I would likely never experience such level of personal accomplishment. And I haven’t. My time in the Army was incredibly grueling, and no words can adequately describe the experience.

Once I left the Army, I attempted to go back to teaching. But with too much of the soldier in me, and too little of the teacher, I opted to find another career path instead, and ended up in Louisville, Kentucky, and joined the police. Why Louisville? Because I desired to stay close to my ex’s family; I was thousands of miles away from mine, and I did not want to deprive my children of family. By then, I was twice a father: Liam, now 13 years old, and Aivan, 8 years of age; both are straight-A students, lovers of reading, soccer players, with Liam also enjoying Archery and Aivan dabbing in basketball. These boys have incredible heart, and have always been my anchor. I have served my community as a police officer in several units, to include being a flex detective as well as a violent crimes taskforce member. I am a training officer and enjoy getting new academy graduates ready for the streets. I feel I am ready for the ladder climb and will be working toward promotions that are in keeping with my passion. As for academic endeavors, while working as a police officer, I returned to school to obtain a Master’s in Divinity, a 90 credit-hour graduate-level professionalizing degree where I had to learn my sixth and seventh language: Hebrew and Greek. It was an amazing experience.

Nothing has come easy for me. I have fought for everything I have. But if there’s one thing I can say is that very few have the level of appreciation and zest for life as I do. Perhaps it was the suffering that refined me, much like fire refines iron. Perhaps it is due to being intimate with death and realizing how fickle and fragile life can be. Some live to work, but I work to live. And the culmination of that life is to share it with someone that you simply can’t live without.