My Story

Being a mom has been the greatest, most rewarding and most difficult job I’ve ever had. The emotional and physical changes I’ve gone through in the last 11 years have been indescribable and every single one of them is worth it just to see my son, Zander, thriving.

In addition to being a mom, I am also a coach. I didn’t always know I wanted to be a coach. In fact, it took several years to realize that coaching moms was not only something I enjoyed learning about, but it was also something I had a passion for.

My personal development journey began when I said yes (for the third time) to a home-based business. I was fed up with Corporate America, and I was attracted to the freedom and flexibility that came from working for myself.

With this new career came a lot of new challenges, some I faced head-on, and others forced me to work on things like my self-esteem, self-worth and other limiting beliefs. But my greatest teaching in my life has
been Zander. In fact, I’ve started seeing him as my course corrector. Whenever I’ve found myself on the wrong path, he’s been the one to point me in the right direction.

The first-course correction came when he was a little over a year old, and I left a marriage that was no longer serving the woman I was becoming. Since that’s not exactly how I saw it at the time, I slipped into the deepest depression of my life.

IIn six months, I’d lost everything I prided myself on. All the things I’d used to bolster my self-esteem were stripped away one by one. I lost my status as a wife, I was going through a second divorce, I stepped down as a leader in my company, returned the free car I had earned and I was back to living in my childhood home, completely dependent on my parent for financial support.

I wanted to die.

But that little boy, who once shared my heartbeat, the one that depended on me for his survival, needed me, so I had to keep going.

For years, I stayed in this half-life. I went through the motions of living my life, working my business and raising Zander, but I’d lost my joy of living.

On January 1, 2017, I got an email from a life coach with a subject that said, “I wish you more P.A.I.N.”

Pain was an acronym that I don’t remember, but the subject was disruptive enough that I opened it.

I signed up for his course called “Success & Fulfillment in Your Business.” That sounded fantastic, although the only word I really paid attention to was “Success.” I desperately wanted to succeed in my business, so I could reclaim my glory days. I would have paid anything to be successful in my business, although I think it was only $197.

During the course, I hired a coach to work with one-on-one, and I fell in love with the way I started to feel, the results in my business, and the changes in my personal relationships. I fell in love with myself.

My Story

I lost my “dream job” working as a legal secretary at the largest law firm in my small hometown in 2010. I spent that year looking for a full-time, permanent job that paid worth getting out of bed in the morning and I couldn’t find one that had all three. After my last boss made me cry every day, I was fed up! I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life being overworked, underappreciated and underpaid. I decided to start my own home-based business and thus was my introduction to the world of personal development. “Feed your mind” was always something I heard. When you’re in an MLM, you are the product your customers are buying. If they can get their product from anyone, it’s not the product that keeps them coming back to you. You are the magnet, your energy, your light, your love is what they can get from you and only you! So, if you want to make enough money to stay out of you Corporate America, your magnet had better be industrial strength.

Although my business put me on the path, it wasn’t until I became a mom that I really began to change. Here was this little boy that grew inside me, shared my heartbeat, and was completely dependent on me. I wanted to give him the world. I wanted him to have everything I could give him. I wanted the very best for that little boy and I realized a little over a year later that being around his dad wasn’t what was best for him.

I was married to a man that was stuck in his own story of self-pity, a man who would rather drink away his pain instead of deal with it, a man who was addicted to attention from other women. The old me was someone who was okay with playing second fiddle so long as I still got to play in the band.

Leaving that relationship wasn’t entirely my choice. I left because of some emails I found but I stayed gone because he didn’t want to work on the issues we had, and he especially didn’t want to work on the issues he had.

I fell into the deepest depression of my life. In less than 3 months, I lost my status as a wife, I was going through another divorce, I stepped down as a leader in my company, returned the free car I had earned, and I was back living in my childhood home, completely dependent on my parents for financial support. I even had to re-home my two dogs that I loved like my own flesh and blood. I wanted to die. Mostly, I just didn’t want to suffer through the embarrassment I felt. I really didn’t want to suffer.

But that little boy, the one who shared my heartbeat, the one that depended on me for his survival, he still needed me, so I had to keep going. And part of me resented him. How dare he need me? How dare he exist?

“I don’t want to be a mom anymore!” I sobbed on the phone with my closest friend, tears streaming down my face. Her response sobered me up.

“I know a woman who will take him for you if you are serious. She wants a son and she would love him like her own. If that’s what you really want, we can make that happen.”

No, that’s not what I wanted. I didn’t know what I wanted, but I knew it wasn’t that. I tried for a year and a half to great pregnant with that little boy because I wanted to be a family. And now that that family was breaking up, I had to redefine the word family and move forward, just the two of us.

For the next 4 years, I struggled with silent depression, self-worth issues and the highs and lows in my business led me to put down my goals to be a leader again and I went back to a corporate job. As an entrepreneur at heart, I hated every aspect of being at my job except for the steady paycheck.

One day, I got an email from a life coach that was the catalyst to me changing my life forever.

I signed up for a course called “Success & Fulfillment in Your Business.” That sounded fantastic, even though the only word I really paid attention to in that title was “Success.” I so desperately wanted to succeed in my business. I would have paid anything to be successful in my business (I think it was only $199 though).

Through that course, I signed up for a personal life coach and I fell in love with the way I started to feel, the results in my business, the changes in my personal relationships. I fell in love with me.

Me? Being in love with me? The woman who hated being alone with herself, the woman who needed to be around people, the women who needed to be in a relationship, the woman who had lost her identity to being a wife, a mother, and a beauty consultant finally didn’t care about those things and truly loved me for me?? This woman who didn’t feel lovable was finally loving herself and what a difference that made in my life!

And now, from this extreme place of love and gratitude, I want other people to have this experience. I want to help women heal their relationships with their fathers, their mothers, their siblings, their children. I want to help women heal their relationship with the mirror.