How did I Get Here? ...My Story of Transformation

Transformation is a natural part of life and it happens over time, whether we choose it or not.

However, what makes us so incredibly powerful and interesting as human beings is our capacity to choose to grow; we have the opportunity to consciously “opt in” for change at any time.

We have this magnificent ability to facilitate our own development, transformation, and healing within ourselves. That's a really incredible gift and it is one that I have continued to unwrap again and again, and will continue to delight in for the rest of my life. 

So... what's my story?

I'll share more details later on, but for now I want to explain my journey of transformation in order to help you get a sense of how I got to be where I am now.

From a very young age, I discovered myself to be a highly sensitive, highly troubled, chronically stressed, and emotionally repressed person who also had a deep longing to help the many people around me who I could feel were experiencing similar things. 

Looking back, it's clear to me that there was a near-perfect mixture between that sense of purpose to help others and my deep desperation to get out of suffering for myself, all of which propelled me forward from that early age. 

I struggled immensely to get through school, work, and life in general for a long time and there were many times I thought I wouldn’t make it. All the while, it was clear to me that I was here in this world to help people heal. I quickly realized however that I was going to have to learn every possible angle for how to heal myself first.

I had this understanding that, when I did help people to heal, I wasn't going to be the one doing the healing --not exactly. Instead I was going to be teaching from experience, helping them to open up to what is possible, and showing them how to heal themselves. I was going to be encouraging them to do what they were born with the ability to do for themselves --that is, to heal, and to experience the true richness of life through the process of personal transformation. 

I started studying psychology with a passion at the same time that I asked my parents to find me a psychotherapist when I was 14 and I lived as my very own healing experiment from there forward.  I also began studying a variety of spiritual and religious teachings and practices during those early days while I was desperately searching for answers to my question, “what is wrong with me?”

I struggled and suffered my way through high school and college with tremendous anxiety and depression.  I really didn’t know if I was going to survive long enough to do anything with my education and that made it very hard for me to stay committed and engaged while traversing my invisible internal battle all along the way.

I began studying mindfulness as well as other types of meditation and yoga which I knew could help me. However, while I understood the concepts with ease and took great comfort in them, I struggled to apply the practices for a very long time.

But I did it!  I "did the work” as best as I could and I experienced slow and incremental healing progress over those several years. I was also blessed with several big “breakthrough” miraculous healings which I experienced as total shifts in consciousness. 

This of course created a massive ignition for my passion to help others heal and I became determined to complete my education and serve.  I also started training as a practitioner of Energy Healing techniques during college and started serving clients through that path right away.

I finished undergrad with my B.A. in Psychology, got certified as a Reiki Master, and went right on to graduate school for my Masters in Social Work, all while still taking on new Spiritual and Energetic Healing techniques and clients along the way. 

In between those two formal degrees is when I met Nicole Sachs and read her book for the first time while we were at a training on Somatic Expression Therapy.  I was instantly sold on her Mind-Body healing model and felt it was a beautiful description of the one tool I believed had saved my own life many times --a form of writing which she calls, JournalSpeak.

She and I were a match made in heaven, we knew we were meant to be long-time friends and colleagues from the moment we met and she was a big influence on my decision to go straight to grad school. I began sharing JournalSpeak with my Spiritual & Energetic Healing clients right away (and pretty much anyone else who would give me the time of day).

And then, of course, I started offering it to each of my Psychotherapy clients as they came to me throughout and after my Social Work Masters program as well.  

I worked for a few different agencies after grad school, serving children, teens, adults, and families with traditional talk-therapy methods and trauma-informed counseling techniques.  The most impactful thing I learned during that time was that the individual’s willingness to “do the work” and their belief in their ability to help themselves was the ultimate determining factor of their progress and results. 

I learned that many people need traditional talk therapy to help them move through difficult symptoms and manage their diagnoses, but that is not the case for all people at all times.

I also saw the benefits of energy medicine and spiritual healing for those who opened their hearts and minds to it.  I learned that my best role was in helping the people who are ready and willing to make significant change happen for themselves.

I realized that when someone is ready to change their thought patterns, habits, and beliefs there is tremendous opportunity for change (and relief). 

When someone is willing to “do the work” and implement the tools they are learning, they can make lasting changes in their own lives and free themselves from the chronic suffering which so many of us face. 

This was true, in my experience and understanding, for people from all backgrounds dealing with all types of chronic symptoms on the mental, emotional, spiritual and physical level.

From there, I moved into the world of Transformational Coaching and I continued working with people and offering my services to clients who were ready to take that leap and learn how to heal themselves.  I’ve seen incredible results in so many people through Nicole’s Freedom from Chronic Pain movement and through my own work with many individuals as well. 

And "doing the work" isn't just about JournalSpeak (although that is my favorite Mind-Body healing tool), its really more generally about what I call, learning to speak the Mind-Body Language.

There are a tremendous amount of tools and resources available for each of us to learn our own system for communicating with ourselves and engaging with self-healing. Its all about deepening your relationship with yourself and cultivating your intuitive ability to heal and grow at will.

Continuing to build and share my knowledge and experience through a variety of trainings and certifications has been and will continue to be of great importance to me and I incorporate many modalities into my work in order to provide a holistic approach to helping people learn how to heal.

I’ve found a way of teaching these tools so that each person is in the driver’s seat of their own healing journey and I can offer my guidance, support, and knowledge of human patterns, trauma, and healing to help them apply these tools and understandings to their own life.

It's a great honor for me to be where I am now because I’ve been working with this opportunity to help people in this way for my whole life.

It's also an honor for me because I certainly am not 100% whole, fixed, or done with my healing journey, and no one ever will be until we take that final breath.

I provide my services as an expert but also as a human being who is right there beside you with my heart wide open. I bring deep connection to the struggles you face and I bolster that connection with my in-depth knowledge and resources from both personal and professional experience around human suffering and healing.

I'm still doing the work, just like everybody else, even though I’ve been doing it and studying it in a more focused way for a long time and have already overcome the chronic suffering from symptoms that held me down for many years.  

In that sense, “doing the work” becomes a lifestyle choice and it becomes much more about taking good care of ourselves and really knowing ourselves and finding a way to fall in love with this crazy-weird thing called life. 

I don’t do it because I’m desperate to end my own suffering anymore, that part is in the past for me.  I do it because I love myself and I know how to take good care of myself; and because I know that if I don’t do it, I can’t expect it to get done, and I also can't expect anyone else to do it for themselves either.

I believe that's a major asset to what I offer because I'm not coming from a place of having already done and closed the book on what I believe others now need to do. Instead I'm coming from a place of having been doing this for a long time and having seen incredible results for myself and others, so I know for sure that it works --and that it’s still working for me and for them.

If it can work for me, and the many others whom I’ve already helped and witnessed on the path, it can work for anyone who is willing to give themselves the chance to transform suffering into healing.

For the future, my intention is to continue transforming, healing, and growing within myself so that I can continue expanding my ability to serve and support others through their process as well.