What You Need to Know
About the Platform
This is a place for you to be heard, without being seen. No pressure, no judgment, no names. A space to anonymously say what’s on your mind, because sometimes you just need someone to listen, and let's be real... asking for help can be really f*cking hard.
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Someone who’s not tangled in your life and who definitely won’t sugarcoat things, but will always try to make you feel understood and provide tangible resources. This platform exists so you don’t have to figure it all out alone.
Go Ask Athena is built on one core belief: feeling a sense of safety in a community is vital to your well-being and when you feel supported everything gets just a tiny bit easier.​​​
What's My Story?
I grew up in Los Angeles and, like a lot of people who grow up fast, I saw the messiness of life early—friendships, relationships, family dynamics, mental health highs and lows. While I come from a place of privilege, and that deserves to be acknowledged and examined, it doesn't erase what I’ve lived through, what I’ve stood beside others through, or the perspective I’ve gained along the way.
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By middle school, I’d already made myself a promise: never be a bystander. Never look away when someone needs support. That vow became my compass.
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In high school, I discovered the world of active listening and equipped myself with tools on how to be an advocate not only for myself, but also for others. I developed extremely high standards for the friends I do keep in my close circle, and learned very early on that you can’t control what people think of you or what they say about you, you can only control how you react. So you better act, speak, and dress the way that feels most authentic to you, cause the only person you’re living for is yourself and you gotta embrace that person and love that person. Most importantly, I was pushed to find my voice and my own resources, so I could help myself and anyone else who needed someone to listen.
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Why would you trust, ME?
Athena has four years training and experience helping teens from her role as a Listener on a peer crisis hotline. She picked up the phone and provided active listening, crisis intervention, and information on local and national resources. She also spent two years leading in-person support groups by providing hands-on guidance to teens ranging from sophomores to seniors in high school. Athena has always been driven to seek out the different ways she can be an outlet for others to feel understood, as she believes building a sense of connection and belonging for others is fundamental to not only one's mental health, but also to living a thriving, happy, successful life.
Her interest in understanding the different elements that contribute to a person living a "thriving" life lead her to pursue a concentration at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study within NYU. She threw herself into studying the mind/body connection and various practices of "caring for the self." Her concentration is made up of Positive Psychology, Complimentary and Holistic Mental Health Studies, Philosophy, and Stern Business courses with a focus on Management and Organizations to understand how people can lead a thriving life both within their professional and private life.
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While she may not share her age or any personal information with everyone in a traditional sense, she considers herself far from reaching the point of thirty and thriving, even if she's just a few years away. With that being said, she's navigated heartbreak, loneliness, immense loss, rejection of all kinds, toxic friendships and relationships, and then some. But above all those life lessons, she's also taught herself how to create an abundant life in New York and Los Angeles. They are magical but nonetheless psychotic cities that she's figuring out how to make her own over the years. With that came learning how to build new communities, how to please bosses from all walks of life, and most importantly how to hustle.
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The tumultuous year of 2020 birthed this platform. It was a time of personal and global upheaval, but Athena found ways to pull herself back together and try to uplift others along the way. This platform is her way of sharing her education, life experiences, wisdom, and, most importantly, her open heart and ears. She's here to listen, support, and offer up all her insights.