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About the founder
Why I built Rewrite Your Story
I’m Brian Kiplinger. I built Rewrite Your Story because my life did not change until my story did.
The why
A couple of years back, a childhood friend took his own life. A year later, my nephew did the same. I’ve carried a question ever since that has no answer: if they had been able to reframe the traumas that carried them to that depth of hopelessness — to see any meaning in what they’d survived, any possibility in what could come next — would they have chosen differently? Maybe. Maybe not. But if this platform helps even one person find meaning, purpose, and hope by reframing their story, it was worth everything.
If you’re carrying something that feels like too much, please reach out now: call or text 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, 24/7). Veterans: dial 988, then press 1, or text 838255. You don’t have to carry it alone.
The life behind it
I’m not a therapist, and I don’t have any degrees. My formal education ended in the 9th grade, the year I was kicked out of school — the 8th is the last grade I ever finished. What I have instead is the lived version of everything this platform addresses. At fourteen, I slept in a tree fort in my backyard, allowed into the house once each morning to shower and change my clothes. At fifteen, I worked at Wendy’s, sold weed on the side, and kept my own apartment. I’ve been shot in a drive-by. I held my best friend since the 2nd grade in my arms as he was dying from a stab wound. Drugs, violence, broken relationships, bad choices — that wasn’t the exception in my world. It was my normal.
I spent years moving through the Pacific Northwest, sleeping wherever I could lay my head, and everywhere I went the same things followed me: the same kinds of people, the same chaos, the same instability — until I started relating to a better story. That’s not a marketing line. It’s the founding discovery.
My life did not change until my story did.
What I built
Rewrite Your Story is the tool I wish had existed. It’s a guided conversation — seven passages, about two to three hours, in as many sittings as you need — with a literary guide we call the Scribe. It helps you tell the truth about what happened, understand how it shaped you, own what’s yours to own, and consciously choose who you become next. Then it writes your story into a 200–300 page hardcover book, in your own voice.
It is not therapy, and it never pretends to be. It’s a companion for making meaning — one that slows down when a chapter gets heavy, keeps your story private, and always points you to a real person when that’s what you need.
The gratitude
I didn’t do it alone. Mentors and good people reached into my life and changed it, and I’ve never forgotten that. It’s part of why every copy sold gives a journey away, free, to someone who needs it. I love people. I love life. I love watching people win — and I believe in the underdog story, because I am one.
I’m not a therapist and I don’t have letters after my name. I have the life that made this necessary.