A seat’s waiting — if you know, you know.
A seat’s waiting — if you know, you know.
This is not just a brand
I never set out to build a brand. I set out to build a life worth remembering. One slow beautiful moment at a time. This is not content. This is my creative sanctuary. A living archive of growth, reinvention, and finding purpose through the beautiful chaos. A home for the story that has shaped me for more than a decade. What you’ll find here is not a gallery of polished moments. It is a quiet window into my journey. Soft, real, and unfolding One courageous step at a time
It began with doubt. The kind that lingers quietly but never fully silences the pull of a dream.
In 2012, at twenty one, I posted my very first photo on Instagram. I didn’t know it yet, but that simple act would spark a journey that would carry me through over a decade of creation and becoming. At the time, I didn’t call myself a creative. I was just a girl documenting the fragments of her life, without a plan or any sense of where it would lead.
In 2014, Maureen, a friend who had her own blog, looked at me and said, “Go for it. You’ll love it.” She said it like it was obvious. I held on to her words. Another friend, Liv, once told me my Instagram captions read like blog entries waiting for a home. “If you ever started a blog, I’d read it,” she said with a quiet kind of certainty. She had a beautiful little cooking blog I loved. Her comment seemed small at the time, but it opened a door I didn’t know was waiting.
The truth is, I was scared.
What if no one cared? What if my voice didn’t matter? Who was I to share anything at all? Fear sat beside me. But it didn’t stop me. I decided to begin anyway. I poured myself into my first posts about fashion and style. For the first time, I felt something shift. Like I had just met a version of myself I hadn’t yet known. The voice had always been there. I just needed to trust it.
In late 2015, I was deep in my master’s dissertation when a passing comment planted a quiet seed. Ama, a friend and fellow dreamer, said it simply, “Why not add fitness to your content? It’ll make you stand out.” Fitness? Me? At the time, the idea felt laughable. How could I possibly weave fashion, style, and fitness into a single story? They felt like worlds apart. Like competing energies rather than connected ones.
But Ama’s words stayed with me. They nudged me gently from the inside out, whispering at the edges of my certainty. What if my story could hold more? What if there was a fuller version of me, waiting to be told?
Over time, the idea stopped feeling strange. Fitness wasn’t just another theme to explore. It became a way to connect the dots of my life, to bring together pieces that already belonged. Even before I could name them.
This wasn’t just about creating more content. It was about living more honestly. It was about aligning with a narrative that was already true. So I stepped forward, slowly but surely. Hesitation in one hand, curiosity in the other.
A new space unfolded. One that blurred the line between old and new, between fashion and fitness, between expression and discipline.
It wasn’t perfect.
It wasn’t smooth.
But it was mine.
By mid-2016, life slowed in ways I hadn’t expected.
I had finished university in Nairobi and returned home to Tanzania, where the sharp sting of unemployment landed harder than I could have imagined. Even with two degrees, the job offers never came. That unexpected gap year left me alone with myself in a way I had never known. No deadlines. No distractions. No carefully planned next steps.
Just me and the quiet, uncomfortable process of becoming. And in that stillness, something else began to stir. A dream I hadn’t yet named started to take root.
What if I started a YouTube channel? The idea both lit me up and scared me. I watched women like Shirley Eniang with her softness, Lydia Millen with her refined storytelling, and Carly Christman whose charm made ordinary life feel cinematic. They made me believe my story might be worth sharing too.
But each time I leaned toward the idea, fear would wrap its arms around me.
You’re not good enough.
No one will care.
And if I am honest, it wasn’t just fear. It was shame. Where I came from, content creation wasn’t considered real work. It wasn’t respected. It wasn’t what you saw girls doing openly or proudly. It felt like putting myself on display, flaws and all. Not just for strangers on the internet, but for people who actually knew me. Old classmates. Family. Friends. The ones whose judgment could cut the deepest.
What would they think?
Would they laugh?
Would they roll their eyes?
So I did what many of us do when we are afraid.
I waited.
I waited.
And waited.
And waited again.
For two whole years, I wrestled with the dream. One part of me longed to begin. The other was terrified of what beginning would ask of me.
Finally, in 2017, something shifted.
I can’t tell you exactly what changed. Maybe it was time. Maybe it was the exhaustion of holding myself back. But I decided to stop overthinking. To stop hiding. To start doing.
That year, I pressed upload on my very first YouTube video: Healthy Morning Routine. It was cringey. It was awkward. It was raw.
But it was mine.
I had no fancy equipment. No polished script. Just a phone camera, a quiet determination, and a dream I could no longer keep tucked away. That video wasn’t just the beginning of my YouTube journey. It was the beginning of me learning how to trust myself.
It wasn’t perfect. It didn’t need to be. That messy, imperfect first step taught me something I now carry with me everywhere:
Starting messy is still starting. And sometimes, that’s all you need to begin.
Looking back, I realize that first video planted the seeds of what would eventually become Kymmiee Lately. It wasn’t just about creating content. It was about proving to myself that I could. It was about silencing the doubts, leaning into the discomfort, and showing up anyway. Not polished. Not fearless. But honest.
The biggest lesson I carry from that season?
Don’t wait for the fear to disappear. It won’t.
Don’t wait for the perfect moment. It rarely comes.
Start messy. Start scared. Start unsure.
Just start.
Because every journey, no matter how extraordinary, begins with a single imperfect step.
In 2018, I said goodbye to MissKymmiee and welcomed Kymmiee Lately.
It wasn’t just a name change. It was a shift in posture. A reclamation. A quiet but clear declaration: This is who I am now. This is where I’m heading. For years, I had been creating from a place that reflected only a fraction of who I was. MissKymmiee represented the beginning. A young woman experimenting with her voice, testing the waters of creative expression, hoping to belong somewhere.
But I was growing. And so was my story.
And Lately… Lately became something deeper. It became a kind of permission.
Permission to evolve.
Permission to change without apology.
Permission to show up even while in transition.
The rebrand wasn’t impulsive. It was slow. It was intentional. It was shaped by conversations that stretched across late nights, especially with Leslie — a friend, a creative partner, and the photographer behind many of the moments I now call memory.
For a long time, I had felt out of alignment with my digital reflection. Something in me knew: I wasn’t creating to connect anymore. I was creating to perform. And that realization cracked something open.
I didn’t want to perform. I wanted to come home.
To myself.
To my truth.
To a space that felt like mine again.
I wanted my presence online to feel like exhale. Not pressure. Not performance. But peace. I wanted it to reflect who I was becoming, not just the snapshots of who I used to be. It was terrifying. Vulnerability often is. Rebranding felt like standing in a room without the armor I didn’t realize I’d been wearing. But Lately gave me a way to name what I was feeling. It didn’t have to be perfect.
It just had to be honest.
For the first time, I stopped creating to meet expectation and started creating to meet myself. That’s when everything began to shift.
Kymmiee Lately became my permission slip. A soft place to land. A space for all the versions of me in flux. And in naming that season, I found resonance with others who were navigating their own version of lately too.
Because here’s what I know now:
Growth is not clean.
It’s uncomfortable.
But it’s holy.
It’s how we remember who we are.
Lately isn’t just a name. It’s a mindset. It’s the courage to lean into the unknown. To make peace with the in-between. To write your way forward, one sentence at a time.
Kymmiee Lately is not just a personal archive. It is the root system of what would become KLA —a creative atelier built not on polish, but on presence. Not on perfection, but on permission.
A place where evolution isn’t hidden. It’s honored.
Because sometimes the bravest thing you can do is stand inside your own story, and say:
“I am still becoming. And that is enough.”
For years, content creation lived in the quiet corners of my life. Nurtured in the in-between. Between meetings. Between deadlines. Between versions of myself.
Late nights became blog posts. Awkwardly edited videos became a kind of voice. Instagram captions read like diary entries I never dared to say out loud.
By day, I wore the mask. I chased stability. I tucked myself into structures that looked like success but never quite fit. By night, I came home to something that felt more like me.
But I was afraid.
Afraid to let go of the structure. Afraid to risk the paycheck. Afraid to leave behind the safety of a job title that made sense on paper.
Mostly, I was afraid to say the dream out loud. Because what if it didn’t work? What if I failed? What if I wasn’t enough?
So I hovered at the edge. One foot in the safe and expected. One foot in the untamed unknown. I whispered “maybe one day” like it was enough to keep the ache at bay. But deep down, I knew. One day doesn’t come unless you call it forward.
And I was standing at the edge of my own freedom, holding my breath, waiting for a moment that only courage could create.
In 2022, the shift arrived. Not as a grand announcement, but as a quiet unfolding behind the curtain.
My time as a Studio Director at a production and marketing agency cracked something open. I had a front-row seat to the beauty and brutality of building something that matters. Ideas were scribbled onto whiteboards and stretched into campaigns that moved people. I led a team. I sat on the executive table. I balanced strategy with softness. Vision with humility. Control with creative trust.
We fought. We built. We failed. We launched. We won.
And in that rhythm. In the late nights and the rewrites and the deep exhale when something finally landed. I realized what I was falling in love with. Not just the content. But the connection. Storytelling became something more than output. It became offering. A way to say, “This is where I’ve been. Maybe you’ve been there too.”
The best campaigns weren’t the polished ones. They were the ones that made people feel something. The ones that said, “You are not alone in this.”
That season shaped me. It sharpened how I listened. How I led. How I created. It taught me that creativity is not just an act. It’s an ethos. And when I stepped away from that studio, I didn’t leave it behind. I carried it with me. Not the job title. Not the accolades. But the heartbeat.
The belief that stories can change things. That presence is a kind of power. That the right words, shared with intention, can open doors you didn’t know were waiting. And maybe, just maybe — everything I had been building in the quiet wasn’t a side project after all.
Maybe it was the beginning.
In July 2023, I recorded and released my very first podcast episode.
It felt like something that should come naturally. I’ve always used my voice. But podcasting wasn’t just talking. It was something more vulnerable. It asked me to show up in ways I hadn’t prepared for. The idea had lived in my head for months. I had the video skills. The storytelling tools. The creative foundation. But every time I got close to starting, doubt pulled me back.
I’d ask myself, “What do I even have to say?” Turns out, plenty. But this wasn’t about just saying things. It was about saying something that mattered. Speaking from the inside out. Making space for truth. Not noise.
The first few episodes felt awkward. The words stumbled. The rhythm was off. I kept questioning it all. My voice, my value, my place in this format.
Am I even good at this?
Is anyone out there listening?
So I stepped back. Not just from the mic, but from the noise in my own mind. I needed to remember why I even started. I needed to return to something honest. And that’s when the clarity came. What started as The Journey Podcast slowly evolved into something deeper.
This isn’t just a podcast. It’s an extension of who I am. Unpolished, unperformed, and deeply human. It’s where I share the stories that actually matter. The quiet wins. The unseen losses. The messy middle where we’re all just trying to keep going.
It’s the place I speak the truths we rarely admit out loud but always need to hear. Because the power lives in the rawness. In the parts we usually edit out. This isn’t about being perfect. It never will be. It’s about being present. And saying “Let’s just be real, even if only for a moment.”
Every time I hit “record,” it feels like an invitation. To soften. To listen. To meet yourself in the mirror of someone else’s becoming.
Kymmiee Unfiltered is a love letter To the version of you navigating the chaos, the shift, the almost. To the one still standing, still searching, still showing up.
And for me, It’s one of the most meaningful things I’ve made.
August 10th, 2024.
After one of the worst meetings of my career, I sat in that boardroom holding back the only words pulsing in my chest:
I quit.
It took everything not to say it out loud. Not to let it erupt with all the fury and freedom it carried. I regret not giving myself that dramatic release. That cinematic, chair-pushing, take-this-job moment. But the truth is, it was never about one meeting. The unraveling had already begun. It was in the way my voice dimmed in rooms I used to command. In the Sunday scaries that turned into daily dread. In the quiet knowing that staying where I was had become scarier than leaving. The dream I’d been silencing. The one I only let speak in journals and late-night tabs open to flights I never booked. That dream refused to be ignored any longer.
So I walked away.
Not from a job, but from the version of myself that stayed small to survive. From the paycheck that paid the bills but starved my soul. From the comfort that had calcified into fear. The leap wasn’t clean. It was messy and loud and full of panic. No backup plan. But a soft place to land. But there was one thing waiting on the other side that I hadn’t expected:
Freedom.
The first few mornings were unnerving. No alarms. No deadlines. Just space and Peace. To feel, to think, to finally begin.
And so I did.
I traveled. I wandered through the streets of Paris with a notebook in my bag and no agenda. I stood still in the Sacré-Cœur Basilica and cried without knowing why. Enjoyed more gelatos and pizza than I could count in Rome. I watched the sun dissolve into the sea in Positano and made a promise to myself: “You’re not going back.” Not to the safety. Not to the silence. Not to the script you outgrew. It wasn’t a vacation.
It was a reckoning. A quiet return to a life I hadn’t allowed myself to imagine fully.
A month or so later I came home, I didn’t have a plan. I had something better.
Conviction.
Now, every project I pour myself into every blog, every video, every collaboration feels like a brick in the house I’m finally building from my own blueprint. I’m still scared sometimes. Still stretching. Still fumbling through the unknown.
But I know this: The greatest risk was never the leap. It was staying. Staying in the job that dimmed me. Staying in the rhythm that numbed me. Staying in a life I no longer recognized as my own.
This leap? It’s the best thing I’ve ever done.
Not because it made sense. But because it made room. For truth, for becoming, for everything I almost talked myself out of.
And now I know: Choosing yourself is the bravest story you’ll ever tell.
Here we are. A girl from Tanzania. Once hesitant with every decision, quietly wondering if her voice even mattered, now standing in her truth with a vision that feels both terrifying and electric. What began as a whisper of curiosity has unfolded into something far greater than I imagined: A life of creating, connecting, and finding beauty in the layered, nonlinear mess of becoming.
Kymmiee, Lately Atelier is not just a brand. It’s a living archive of every moment that made me braver. Every win, every loss, every quiet decision to keep going. It’s a story stitched together by courage and clarity, by softness and fire. It’s proof that the most profound transformations rarely happen in the spotlight… They happen in the latelys. The overlooked, in-between moments. The ones where everything shifts, because you chose to show up. Not perfectly, but honestly.
Growth is rarely glamorous. It’s awkward. Tender. Sometimes gutting. It lives in the sleepless nights, the shaky leaps, the slow unraveling of who you were and the uncertain forming of who you’re becoming. It asks you to be seen, even when you’re not ready. And it rewards the ones who keep showing up anyway.
This is my story.
Imperfect.
In progress.
Deeply human.
Entirely mine.
By sharing it, I hope you see glimpses of your own journey. Because the truth is; we’re all in the becoming. We’re all figuring it out. And we’re not meant to do it alone.
Welcome to Kymmiee Lately Atelier. A space where growth is celebrated, connection is sacred, and dreams are meant to be chased, out loud and on purpose.
Let’s create.
Let’s evolve.
Let’s build what matters — together.
With all my love,
Catch all the fun, real-life moments, unfiltered behind-the-scenes glimpses, and tips I share on Instagram. Let’s connect!
