Samantha served in the U.S. Army from 2003 to 2013, including as a signals intelligence analyst and Cultural Support Team leader attached to Joint Special Operations Command in Afghanistan. She is a Bronze Star recipient and 2014 Pat Tillman Scholar, with a BFA from Old Dominion University and an MLA from Johns Hopkins University.

Her literary memoir, Everything Happens For You, is represented by Mark Gottlieb at Trident Media Group and explores the cost of performance, the afterlife of war, addiction, motherhood, and the process of becoming fully inhabitable to herself.

Her healing work has included writing, painting, and carefully supported psychedelic therapy. She speaks about plant medicine with nuance, not as a miracle cure, but as one part of a larger reckoning with trauma, integration, truth, and the body’s intelligence. Her work has appeared in The War Horse and Brown Sugar Literary Magazine, and she has been featured on CNN’s The One Thing discussing veteran healing and psychedelic therapy.