I Am Kandi Blaze

I Am Kandi Blaze

I have never fit neatly into one little box.

I am a writer. A witness. An experience designer. A lifelong gearhead. An announcer behind the microphone. A traveler drawn to old roads, forgotten history, haunted places, and the quiet moments most people pass without noticing.

I am also a wife, a mother, a grandmother, and a three-time cancer survivor still learning what it means to live fully inside a body that has carried me through more than most people will ever see.

But none of those titles tells the whole story by itself.

I was born on April 3—National Find a Rainbow Day—and later given the name Rainbow Tree by Cherokee elders. Its meaning has followed me throughout my life: roots that grow deep and branches that continue reaching high.

That name became more than something I was called. It became a map.

My roots live in survival, family, old machines, hard-earned wisdom, and the people and places that shaped me. My branches reach toward every version of myself I was once told could not possibly belong to the same woman.

The hot rod builder and the poet.

The pinstriper and the paranormal investigator.

The woman in the announcer’s tower and the woman sitting quietly beneath the trees.

The survivor who carries scars and the feral goddess who refuses to apologize for taking up space.

The darkness and the color.

I do not believe light and darkness cancel each other out. I believe they make each other more interesting.

For years, I built and restored hot rods, worked inside my own shop, laid paint with a pinstriping brush, created trophies, raced cars, and lived inside a world of engines, metal, fire, and horsepower. I learned that machines have personalities, builders leave pieces of themselves inside everything they create, and every car arriving at a starting line carries a story far larger than its elapsed time.

That is part of what I bring behind the microphone.

I do not simply announce numbers, names, or what happened on the track. I look for the person inside the machine. I want the audience to understand what was built, what was risked, who helped make it possible, and why the moment matters.

I create experiences people remember.

Sometimes that happens from an announcer’s tower. Sometimes it happens while producing a downtown event, creating a stage for someone else to shine, designing a fundraiser, or turning an ordinary gathering into a story people will still tell years later.

And sometimes it happens quietly, on the page.

Once, I went searching for ghosts.

Now, I search for something quieter.

I look for the places where humanity still whispers—the fingerprints left on old buildings, the stories buried beneath forgotten roads, the lightning spidering across the night sky, the movements of a chipmunk, the arrival of a butterfly, and those pauses between things when nature seems to take a breath.

I write about survival, strange places, grief, wonder, forgotten history, open roads, and the moments that ask us to stop long enough to notice them.

I have learned that witnessing is not passive.

To witness something is to honor it. To remember it. To say: This happened. This mattered. You were here.

My life has changed direction many times. Cancer changed it. Chronic illness changed it. Pain changed it. Losing pieces of the future I once imagined changed it.

But change did not erase me.

It taught me how to become.

I no longer believe survival means returning to the woman I was before everything happened. I believe survival means meeting the woman who emerged from it—and allowing her to be complicated, visible, joyful, scarred, ambitious, exhausted, hopeful, strange, and fully alive.

Kandi Blaze is not a character I created to hide behind.

She is what happened when I stopped separating the pieces of myself that had always belonged together.

She is the gearhead and the storyteller.
The promoter and the poet.
The traveler and the witness.
The woman who can command a crowd and still be moved to tears by one quiet act of courage.
The Rainbow Tree—rooted deeply, reaching higher, and still growing.

This website is not a reinvention.

It is a gathering.

A home for the machines, the microphones, the adventures, the photographs, the history, the beautiful darkness, the people I meet, the stories I carry, and the wonderfully feral spaces between them.

Whether you have followed my journey for years or have only just found your way here, welcome.

Look closer.

Listen carefully.

There is always more to the story.

I am Kandi Blaze.

And I am still becoming.