MY STORY
I have been a Personal Development Coach since 2017. My focus in the past few years has been on emotional intelligence, neuroscience in coaching, and I’ve recently begun studying somatic processes and how they can create another way to guide my clients into a more integrated awareness of self in all facets of life.
My coaching is warm, personal, and creative. I use experimentation and out of the box thinking to help my clients find their own ideas about their own lives.
I’m a fully-certified Coaching Professional (CPC, PCC, ELI-MP). I help my clients find their bigger stories of self awareness, love, and trust. The heart of my work is helping you connect to your true self so you feel confident, capable, and alive.
I know from my own experience that the closer I am to myself and the more clearly I see who I am, the fuller my life has become. Over the past decade I have done serious work on myself. I've spent countless hours learning about the human experience, coaching, and helping people connect to themselves.
This story is how I got here.
In 1971, I was born in a military hospital in Frankfurt, Germany.
My parents loved me, but had childhoods loaded with dysfunction. That meant they weren't equipped to be the parents they wanted to be. Alcoholism, mental illness, and suicide shaped their lives, and that shaped my life.
I started blackout drinking at age 14 to cope with all the things I felt and couldn't stand to feel.
It became a habit. Because I was afraid of myself I stayed in an unhealthy pattern of binge drinking to avoid knowing me.
I got married, had two children. I did most of the things I was supposed to do, but inside I knew I wasn't being fully, authentically myself.
Then December 7, 2012 arrived.
That day I realized it was possible for me to change my mind, and that would change my life. And I got to work making that thing happen. I made a promise to myself to never drink again. I made a promise to finally, at 41 years old, to get to know who I was and what I wanted. To know all of me.
It was a beginning.
I started reading everything I could find on recovery, trauma, human behavior, healing, and growth. I wrote a regular blog about my sobriety. I joined a women's recovery group. I was featured in Good Housekeeping magazine for being sober. I found a therapist. I did a trauma informed yoga teacher training.
I met my self.
Four years into my sobriety I decided to go back to school to be a therapist. It was then a dear friend asked me if I knew what a Life Coach was. I looked it up and WOW! I got so excited!
I immediately started researching training programs. I signed up with iPEC, one of the best coach trainings in the country.
That training, along with my commitment to growth, healing, and life experience prepared me to be a supportive and creative Personal Development Coach. I am an active member of ICF Global, ICF Raleigh, The Institute of Coaching, WBECS, and Coaches Rising.
I believe that everyone has the right to be as fully themselves as they can be- that underneath all the conditioning, status quo, and social norms there lives a person who has something unique and wonderful to offer the world. That person is you.
I am an avid reader, devoted writer, and trail runner. I love neuroscience and human behavior. I enjoy spending time connecting with people. Supporting my clients and my community of family and friends as they live into being fully themselves is what brings me the most joy.