Growing Wild

When life pulls you to rock bottom, grow higher in your purpose...

A thriving career, happy marriage, and balanced, well-rounded children. Picturesque. Social media-worthy. But what few knew is that by her twenties, Kathryn Vigness had already lived a life full of pain and heartache. At age 15, she had survived a tragic car accident in rural Minnesota, flying through the windshield of her high school sweetheart’s car and sustaining life-threatening injuries that left her not only physically, but spiritually, shattered. After the accident, a startling secret sends Kathryn on a decade-long journey for validation.

Growing Wild follows Kathryn’s life from the farm, as a heartbroken girl longing for answers and certainty, to adulthood where she seeks external acceptance and her “happily ever after.” In her quest for identity, she shapeshifts through roles as the fixer, the grad student, the professional, the wife, the mother, the philanthropist, and the caregiver. Checking all the boxes and doing all the right things to create her perfect life, Kathryn realizes she still isn’t “there”—which brings her to confront her deepest fear: that she’ll never be enough.

By growing beyond the white picket fence and returning to her roots, Kathryn is able to forgive herself for her past and finally finds a solstice in unbecoming everything she told herself she had to be—and helping others do the same.