Meet the team behind borderline babe:
The Babe, The Brawn, The Beauty, The Brains, and The Backers

the babe

Veronica is the founder of Borderline Babe; this is her story. 

Veronica’s ongoing journey with mental health has included battles with anxiety, depression, obsessive compulsive disorder, anorexia and, ultimately, a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder (BPD) at age 21. She is in ongoing treatment for BPD and suicidal ideation in the Psychiatry High Risk Program (PHRP) at Upstate University Hospital. Veronica started with the PHRP in June 2022, following her BPD diagnosis. She left the program briefly in December of 2022 but returned in July of 2023. She not only successfully completed the program’s initial year of treatment but saw complete remission of symptoms of all her mental health disorders. Veronica has remained an active patient in the PHRP, utilizing both the long-term maintenance program and the more intensive “booster” therapy interventions to support her ongoing recovery and maintain remission of symptoms. Veronica credits the wonderful people at the PHRP with nothing less than saving her life. In fact, Veronica will be competing in the Miss NY for America Strong Pageant in June 2026, and she will run under the title Miss Upstate New York to honor the PHRP staff.

Veronica believes it is her life’s mission to advocate for mental health awareness by sharing her story. Her call to advocacy began in May of 2024, with her regular mental health column, Beautiful, Powerful, Deserving in Rochester Woman Online Magazine (RWO). Love and thanks to Kelly Breuer, owner of RWO, for making that first step possible! Veronica also served on the National Education Alliance for Borderline Personality Disorder’s (NEABPD) Lived Experience Committee in 2024 and 2025, writing several blog posts for the committee. She has also had the honor of speaking on behalf of the Upstate Foundation and the PHRP at several conferences and presentations.

Outside of her work in mental health advocacy, Veronica is building a rewarding and meaningful professional life. Upon the completion of her initial treatment for BPD, she achieved her years-long goal of becoming a licensed medical aesthetician. Veronica is continuing her education and will be starting nursing school next year. She plans to go into aesthetic nursing, but is also interested in emergency and trauma response, burn care, and psychiatric nursing.

Veronica leads a full, vibrant, and joyful life. She is blessed to be surrounded by a loving and supportive community, and she cherishes many close relationships with family and friends. These days, Veronica is at peace with herself. She finds beauty in the mundane, and is happiest fresh out of the shower, slathered in skincare and dressed in cozy sweats—a homebody who loves to get dressed up, but who hates to go out! Over the years she has cultivated a healthy lifestyle that is supportive of her whole body wellness and continued commitment to recovery. She’s a morning person to the extreme, who loves early bedtimes—but doesn’t always get them! Exercise is her medicine, and she enjoys cooking and baking healthy foods with fresh, organic, unprocessed ingredients. Someday she’d like to live on a farm, with a huge garden and a crowd of animals.

Borderline Babe is a deeply personal continuation of Veronica’s work in mental health advocacy. Essentially, Borderline Babe is Veronica’s diary. She is inviting you to read along with her in real time as she navigates life: love and relationships, work and play, ups and downs, good and bad, mental health and mental illness. Veronica hopes you will feel her pain, suffer her losses, and taste her tears. She also wants you to see her smiles, rejoice in her successes, and hear her laughter.

Why? Veronica believes we all tend to share only a carefully curated version of ourselves with the world, a version we think the world will approve of. Consciously or subconsciously, we hide away parts of ourselves for fear of being vulnerable, or labelled, or judged. She hopes her thoughts, reactions, reflections, and emotions—raw, raunchy, and unfiltered—will echo some of your own, and let you know you are never alone, never the only one who feels the way you feel.

Borderline Babe is Veronica’s baby. Conceived with love in her bed, one sticky sweet midsummer ‘morn, it is the reflection of her very essence. Each thought, word, font, thong, and photograph is an extension of Veronica—all carefully curated for your eyes, and your eyes only. So, without further ado, Veronica would like to officially welcome you to her heart and soul, Borderline Babe.