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Jordan Laine: She Didn’t Ask for This Platform, but She Plans to Use It With Everything She’s Got
- Holly Arend
- 24 hours ago
- 7 min read
Written by Holly Arend | Photographed by Chirag Bachani
Mental health was not always the headline of Jordan Laine’s story, but it was there. Quietly shaping her and threading its way through every chapter. It showed up in the grief she tucked away, in the journals she filled late at night, in the moments she kept showing up when no one knew how much strength that took.
Long before From Us To You had a name, it was already living in the way she moved through the world: gently, honestly, and with an openness that made others feel like they did not have to hide.
When her mom died, Laine did not just lose a parent. She lost the soft place to land. She was 14, old enough to understand what hospice meant but young enough to still believe in happy endings.
“I thought she’d get better like she always had,” she said. “I didn’t think that was going to be the ending. Not until she said it out loud.”
From that moment on, something shifted. She did not fall apart. She got busy. As a teenager, she stacked honor roll certificates, extracurriculars, and part-time jobs like armor. On the outside, she seemed to be thriving. On the inside, she was just surviving.
“I was told by a therapist later that I had become addicted to productivity and was equating what I could produce with my self-worth as a person,” she said. “I didn’t even realize it. I just thought I was doing what I had to do.”
But even then, Laine knew how to care for herself in ways that mattered. She started therapy at 14. She journaled. She listened to her gut. And somewhere in the midst of all that quiet survival, a new foundation was being built, one rooted in self-awareness, compassion, and a deep desire to help others feel less alone.
Therapy did not fix everything, but it gave her a place to be honest with herself. In a house full of masculine energy without her mother, it became her safe space.
“It helped me learn to trust myself,” she said. “To know when something didn’t feel right and to say it out loud.”
That instinct to hold space for herself became the reason she could hold it for others. Long before she knew what she was building, Laine was already becoming the kind of person people opened up to. She would learn later that this is what happens when you choose vulnerability over performance. When you let people see your truth, they are more likely to show you theirs.
After high school, she went searching for clarity. Whether it was moving from Ohio to North Carolina or Washington, D.C., she ended up with the opposite. Her journey led her to more questions. She graduated during the pandemic, started adulthood with a corporate job while running her own fitness business, and fell into a relationship that reflected parts of herself she had not realized still needed healing.
“I thought I had done the work,” she said. “But then I looked in the mirror and asked myself why I was letting someone treat me that way.”
That was the wake-up call. The quiet unraveling that led to something stronger. She walked away from that relationship and toward herself. She started going on solo dates. She leaned into her independence. She walked in D.C. Fashion Week, said yes to things that scared her, and surrounded herself with people who made her feel powerful. She did not find herself all at once, but little by little, she came back.
And that was when she met Patrik “Patty” Laine.
They were never supposed to meet. She was in Columbus for a wedding. He was heading back to Finland the next day. But sometimes the universe has other plans. He had a tattoo on his shoulder in honor of his dad. She asked about it. He told her the story. She told him hers. Two people with very different lives found common ground in their losses.
“It felt easy,” she said. “Like the connection came from the parts of ourselves that weren’t perfect.”
Their bond was built on truth. Not the curated, polished kind. The kind that sounds more like, “I’ve been there too,” and “I didn’t know I needed to hear that.” They did not come together because they were the same. Jordan and Patty are opposites in almost every way. She is the extrovert who makes friends in elevators. He is quiet, goofy, steady. She thrives in the gray. He sees in black and white. But what they share is deeper than personality. It is purpose.
That purpose came into focus when Patty took a break from hockey to prioritize his mental health. There was no script for that moment.
“With physical injuries, there’s a clear path,” Laine said. “Mental health doesn’t work that way. You have to create the roadmap yourself.”
The messages started rolling in. Encouragement. Stories. People said they had been struggling too and did not know how to talk about it until now. They realized the private conversations Jordan and Patty were having, raw, hopeful, healing, were exactly what others needed. So they stopped keeping them private.
From Us To You was born out of that decision. It did not start as a nonprofit. It was not mapped out in some strategic brainstorm. It was just an Instagram page at first, something small and personal. But the response was overwhelming. People did not just follow. They reached out. They shared. They asked how they could help.
Suddenly, it became bigger than a page. It became a platform. A movement. A reminder that mental health is part of the human experience, not something to be whispered about in the margins.
“We knew we had to keep going,” Laine said. “If people were willing to share their truth, we had to create a space where that felt safe.”
She is not a licensed therapist, though she is working toward her master’s degree through New York University’s online program. Still, she has been showing up for mental health work for years, through her healing, through wellness coaching, through the quiet moments with her clients in D.C., where they ended up talking more about their minds than their meals.
“Mental health is the foundation,” she said. “You can’t show up physically if your brain is fighting you every step of the way.”
Even in high school, journaling became her anchor.
“I could write what I was too afraid to say out loud,” she said. “It helped me survive.”
She kept every notebook, every letter. There is one she wrote to her future husband, two months before meeting Patty. She read it to him on their wedding day.
“Not everyone can say ‘I’m struggling’ out loud,” she said. “But maybe they can write it down first.”
She sees journaling as one of the most accessible mental health tools, and it is a big part of how she continues to process the world. Looking back on old entries reminds her how far she has come. “Sometimes it’s like reconnecting with my younger self,” she said. “It’s emotional to see how much growth has happened.”
Growth rarely comes easy. Some jobs felt purposeless. Seasons of transition felt like freefall. A diagnosis of Hashimoto’s disease taught her how easily women’s pain is dismissed. “I was originally told it was mild depression,” she said. “But I knew it was something more. Doctors are people, too. You have to advocate for yourself.”
She did. She kept pushing. She found answers. And now she shows up with the mindset that everything, even the setbacks, is part of something bigger.
She thinks about the time she and Patty were running late to a Billy Joel concert in Columbus. Patty hates being late. She was stressed. But as they waited outside the venue, a golf cart rolled by with Billy Joel on it, headed to the stage. If they had been on time, they never would have seen him that close.
“The universe is always working in our favor, even when we think it isn’t.”
Now, the universe has her building something even bigger. From Us To You is officially a nonprofit, with events, panels, partnerships, and more resources launching soon. The Montreal fashion show, in collaboration with M.A.D. and local athletes, was another step forward in using unexpected spaces for fashion, sports, and culture to talk about the things that matter.
“Some people came for the fashion. Some for the athletes,” she said. “But they all left thinking about something deeper.” At this year’s MAD Fest, Laine was intentional about every detail. “Even though it was a fashion show, I wanted everything to tie into From Us To You’s mission,” she said. Models walked in designs from Montreal creators while advice submitted by the community appeared behind them.
