Katrina Moore: The Making of a Life, One Unlikely Step at a Time
Katrina Moore’s story doesn’t start where you’d expect. In fact, if you’d seen her life back then, it would have looked like something out of a gritty novel—a family business that operated outside the rules, a life pieced together from what was there, held up by the people who made it work. Selling drugs wasn’t a choice, but a given. It was what kept her family going, a way to make ends meet. Katrina moved twenty-six times before she turned sixteen, and learned to blend in, pick up and move on, live with one foot out the door. She had survival down by the time she could talk.
But within that chaos, there was one constant: her grandmother. Katrina’s grandmother was a woman made of pure love, and she didn’t fit the mold. She taught Katrina to “love with her hands,” to cook, crochet, paint—whatever needed doing, really. She had run her own businesses, worked as a property manager, and knew God in a way that wasn’t confined by the usual rules. “She had this confidence in herself,” Katrina says. “She was honest, blunt, and lived life fully.” To Katrina, she was more than a caregiver; she was the stable, steady force that held her world together, offering the kind of love that was practical, honest, and just a little bit wild.
And here’s where things take a turn. You see, Katrina was different. As a young girl, she often saw things others didn’t—ghosts, for one, and strange feelings she couldn’t name but couldn’t ignore. Her grandmother was often there, a calm presence beside her as she tried to make sense of what she was seeing. “My mother would tell me it was just the chocolate I’d eaten before bed,” Katrina laughs. “But it was real.” Years later, after her grandmother passed, a psychic reading would reveal that these “feelings” were something real—a bridge to the unseen. Fifteen minutes before her session with psychic Carolyn Molnar, Katrina felt a deep pressure in her right ear and realized later it was her grandmother reaching out, a sign of what was to come. This was her gift: the ability to feel beyond what most people saw, to pick up on the whispers of a world that only the sensitive notice. Since then, strangers have told her things she knows before they say them, often looking at her in shock, saying, “I think I was supposed to meet you today.”
By the time she had her first child at seventeen, Katrina was determined to break away from the shadows of her past. She wanted something stable, something different for her son. She had seen enough of insecurity to know she didn’t want it, and with that came the realization that she needed a life where she didn’t have to look over her shoulder. Security, though—a life where she didn’t fear the police or worry about jail—wasn’t as easy as it sounded. The old life tugged at her, pulling her back in ways she didn’t always recognize. She ignored her intuition, opened a website selling documents “for entertainment purposes,” even though the whispers told her it wasn’t right. When she ignored that inner warning, the FTC stepped in, and Katrina was forced to shut it down. “It’s funny now, but back then it was just another example of how the whispers would get louder when I tried to ignore them,” she says.
In 2017, Katrina decided to change things once and for all. Inspired by the Martina Cole novels she’d read, stories of women who turned survival into strength, she created Intimate Beach Wedding (IBW). It was a wedding business, but more than that, it was a labor of love. She wanted to capture real moments, the kind of quiet, genuine connections that held the weight of truth. Photography came easily to her, almost like it had been there all along, waiting. She captured moments on the beaches of California, small, intimate weddings that seemed to radiate love. But the work took a toll. Katrina was exhausted after each wedding, carrying the emotions of her clients in ways she didn’t understand at the time. Only later would she realize that, as an intuitive, she absorbed everything, every emotion, every quiet longing, and hadn’t learned to release it.
By 2020, Katrina’s vision expanded. She imagined IBW stretching beyond the beach to the mountains, the deserts, the cliffs. She created Intimate Mountain Weddings (IMW) and Intimate Desert Wedding (IDW), each location holding its own sense of calm and beauty. And then, just as she was about to launch, COVID arrived. Everything stalled, timelines fell apart. But Katrina, used to a life in flux, held steady. IBW continued to thrive, while IMW and IDW found their own footing over time, growing quietly in the background.
The mountains became more than a business for Katrina. After her divorce in 2019, she left the city, moving into the mountains and finally finding the peace she had been looking for. Cities, to her, had always felt oppressive; nature, on the other hand, was liberating. She remembered her years in Hawaii as a child, surrounded by animals, the girl who rescued strays and spent her days in the company of nature. The mountains offered that same sense of belonging.
But with this peace came another realization: stability isn’t found outside ourselves. “Growing up, I saw people from all walks of life,” Katrina says. “And I realized that wealth doesn’t free you from pain; no one is immune to suffering.” Recent revelations in the entertainment industry had left her questioning the lives we idolize, understanding that real freedom, real peace, had to come from within.
Looking back on her life, Katrina sees the pattern of learning through intuition and sometimes hard-won lessons. Whether it was the website shutdown or a painful relationship, the whispers had always been there, warning her, and when she ignored them, the lesson came louder. “I used to judge the ‘bad’ outcomes,” she says, “but now I realize each one taught me to trust that inner voice a little more.” She can see now that intuition is a gift—a kind of foresight that, if she listens, can help her avoid trouble and find her way.
Today, Katrina’s life isn’t just about building a business or even finding a purpose. It’s about choosing to listen—to herself, to the unseen, to the quiet wisdom that has been with her all along. She has built her life from the fragments of a complex past, guided by the hands of her grandmother, the whispers she once ignored, and the light she has learned to carry on her own. Katrina Moore’s story is about making a life where once there was only survival, turning each piece of that journey into something whole, something hers.
