From Fear to Fierce: How I Built a Life of Unapologetic Joy
- Jul 2
- 4 min read
By Trinette Faint
I received what would be a life-changing email in June of 2020. A woman I hadn’t seen in at least a decade reached out to see if I was available to model for Vogue Knitting magazine. The woman, my dear friend Mary Jane Mucklestone, author and world-renowned knitwear designer, asked if I would be available to travel from San Francisco, where I was living at the time, working in tech, to Portland, Maine, to model for her. In the dead heat of the pandemic, where everything was upside down and unpredictable? Hell yes. A month later, I stepped into my hazmat suit and boarded an empty flight to Boston.
I began modeling as a teenager in Chicago, in the late 1980s, and at the time Black models were not requested or working nearly as much as they are today. A lanky 6’1 even back then, my sights were set on becoming a high-fashion model, and I would spend the next few years in hot pursuit of that goal. Going to Paris as a young model and being told I was not wanted specifically because I was Black (I heard this repeatedly), or that I was too big (at a bony 121 pounds) did nothing to quell my desire. Even after, as a Ford runway model in New York, living in a women’s hotel, nearly starving to death, and never booking any jobs because then the problem was that I was too tall, still didn’t stop me. I never booked one job during those years in Paris or New York. The things I was being criticised for were things I could not change about myself—my skin color, height, and weight—so I changed course and enrolled at Emerson College, in Boston, where I spent my semester abroad in The Netherlands and traveled extensively around Europe—igniting my global travel lust— and spent my last semester at our Los Angeles campus, that eventually led to a job as Matt Damon’s personal assistant, which took me around the world. I had other entertainment industry jobs as well, and it was incredible to be surrounded by so much creativity, which inspired my own.
After three years working with Matt, I took a break from the business and retreated to Camden, Maine for a summer, where I was scouted to model for a knitting publication, which turned into a years-long tenure as a knitting model. Commercial modeling success never materialized for me, so I held other jobs as I worked on my craft and nurtured my creativity over the years. And after I’d been living in San Francisco for a few years and got the Vogue Knitting offer, I was extremely grateful for the opportunity.
Blistering hot in sweaters, sweltering under the sun, the shoot was tough, but worth it. And landing the cover (alongside fellow model Erin Gamboa), was hugely validating, and at 49, felt indescribably good. I knew then that it was not too late to recapture what I wanted to do.
After relocating to the east coast the next year, I was still working in tech, each minute, hour, and day, chipping ever so away at my creative soul. A few years later, fully ensconced in my tech bubble (read: financial security in a still time of global turbulence), I was laid off. This, two weeks after my dog died, and weeks before I was scheduled to have a second knee surgery.. To say I was thrown in the deep end of fear and grief, would be an understatement.
Then came physical therapy, which, although brutal, gave me something to focus on. After a month of PT, I regained my focus and began leaning into my creative self. The same tenacity I displayed as a young model in Paris and New York, had never left me. I’d continued to model, act, and write in the shadows of any job I’d ever had for many years. And in the summer of 2024, I’d even earned a Feature Film Screenwriting Certificate, at 52, from UCLA, having gone through the program online on nights and weekends, while working full-time. My inner creative was burning to express herself and I enlisted in a slew of acting classes and updated my modeling portfolio.
Being released from a job that had brought me the opposite of joy was proving to have been a blessing in disguise.
My financial security had vanished, but I was happy and fulfilled. After the initial shock wore off and my fear subsided, I realized that my full creative self had been waiting for its moment to emerge from the confines of my corporate life. My hustle has been real, but comforted by the fact that I'm creating my life on my own terms.
Two of my screenplays placed as semi-finalists in a TV pilot contest, and I went to London recently to pitch them and the reception was far better than I expected; they’re currently being read by producers and directors alike. And now, as the founder of a marketing communications agency, a working actor and model, and screenwriter with a promising future ahead, my days are filled with an immeasurable amount of joy that I’ve cognizantly created by blazing my own trail as I build it.
Trinette Faint, 53, is the founder of Faint Services Group, a two-time novelist, screenwriter, actress, and model, and divides her time between Boston and Europe, where her stories are often set. Learn more at https://www.faintservicesgroup.com/, https://floor51productions.com/, and https://trinettefaint.com/.
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