About me...
Bloom
We often mistakenly believe that happiness is a result of the way things look on the outside. I spent years thinking I couldn't have an amazing life if I didn't have all the things that other people had that I thought would make me happy. Wealth, influence, success and the perfect body all seemed like necessary tools to feel fulfilled. I thought that I needed those things to create my dream life. In becoming a coach, I learned that these are all products of co-creating an amazing life, not the other way around! -->>
Stem
The stem represents the growth seasons of our lives and this is where self-leadership and courage came in. I started to learn to lead myself through the hard and heavy emotions and to have courage to be seen in my struggles and imperfections. I still believe that this is the hardest, yet most rewarding part of creating an amazing life. Growth can be challenging! Yet to bloom beautifully, the stem must transport water and nutrients from the roots, and this happened by tapping into the ultimate Source of wisdom in my life, my Creator.
Soil
I started looking at all the things around me that were either in alignment with, or sabotaging, the life I wanted to create. I realized that my identity was so tied up in the things around me...my family, my friends, my hobbies and passions, my career and how much money I could make. I lived a wonderful life, and yet, I still felt so unfulfilled. It was time to get to the very seed of who God created me to be.
Seed
That was when I realized that my core beliefs were what was keeping me unfulfilled. I didn't have confidence in who I was created to be. I was looking to things outside of me to fulfill me. I was relying on my fragile self image and the shifting sands of wealth, success and social standing. I'd forgotten that my worth and value came from a loving Creator, Who had a perfect design for my life. And once I loved, accepted and EMBRACED who I was created to be, everything in my life began to change.
My Why
She came to me one day during the long Covid summer.
She’d been playing down the street all day as she had every day in this strange, new world of in-between. But today it seemed as if something was wrong...a few storm clouds gathering below the surface of her emotions on this sunny, summer afternoon.
We spoke for a few minutes and she started to leave the room. “Wait, Honey,” I said. She stopped and turned around. “Are you ok?” I asked. “You don’t seem like yourself.”
“I’m just really tired and hungry,” she said, and I could tell she was on the verge of tears. “All I’ve eaten all day is an apple and a string cheese.”
“Why?” I asked. “Why didn’t you come home for lunch?”
Then the dam broke. Silent tears started streaming down her face.
“I just want to be skinny,” she said. “Everybody likes the skinny, pretty girls and I’m just not.”
In that moment I thought my heart would break.
My beautiful, sensitive, smart, strong, NORMAL-SIZED little girl. The one who loves to play waitress and fix fun foods for her cousins and brothers. The one who saved her money for weeks to buy presents for kids in the cancer ward of the hospital. The one who stole her daddy’s and my heart the moment she was born. That little girl who got in the car after preschool one day and said she thought all the kids were inside crying because she left. The one who came home from Kindergarten and said “I’m going to tell Michael he’s going to marry me and he is going to FAINT!!”
What happened to that confident, happy little girl? Who did this to her? Who stole that confidence? Who blinded her to the beauty that she possessed both in body AND soul? And WHY could I feel a familiar stab of pain with every word she’d just spoken? Oh yes. It was very familiar. It was entirely too familiar. And it cut me to the core. Did I do this to her?? Had my feelings of lack and unworthiness somehow been passed on to her? Was I responsible for the boogie man in the closet of my little girl’s fragile confidence?
How many times had I thought the same thoughts, not even knowing that JUST THE THOUGHT excluded me from the very feelings I wanted to feel. Valued. Accepted. Loved. Admired. Included. Did I live that out in such a way that my beliefs had become hers??
You see, it wasn’t a lack of beauty that kept my little girl from experiencing these things. It wasn’t because she wasn’t skinny enough. It wasn’t because she wasn’t likable.
It was because she had believed a lie.
I know you’ve felt it. Not skinny enough, not pretty enough, not tall enough, not small enough, not wealthy enough, not smart enough, not successful enough, not light enough, not dark enough...
It could go on for eternity. It HAS gone on for eternity so far. What a crappy lie to believe.
NOT ENOUGH... it steals the joy, doesn’t it?
So I had a decision to make that day.
Both for my sake and for the sake of my little girl. This was not about size and beauty. This was about something deeper. This was about worthiness. It was about love. It was about confidence and character, mindset and responsibility. And it was about TRUTH.
We worked through some of those painful beliefs that day. And we’ve sometimes had to work on them again. And we’ve even had to work on some other painful things that have come up. But we recognized the lie for what it was.
And out of this pain my brand was born...
