Shannon Marie Kahololani Sossamon was born in Hawaii, and was raised in Reno, Nevada.[2] Her ancestry includes Dutch, English, French, German, Irish, Filipino, and Hawaiian.[3][4]
Her parents divorced when she was five, and Sossamon and her sister were then raised by her mother, who married Randy Goldman, a salesman and manager of an auto dealership.[5] Sossamon attended Galena High School in Reno, graduating in 1995.[citation needed]
The day after her high school graduation, she relocated to Los Angeles with two friends, to study dance.[3][6] “Nothing compares to that feeling when you first leave home and arrive somewhere new,” she once recalled. “When we woke up in the morning, just making coffee felt amazing. It felt like being so free – just to wake up and make coffee and look at our couch.”[3] The y in her first name was an alteration in 1995.[7]
