My Gifts
If you are anything like me, you’d prefer to shrink and pretend you have no gifts. Unfortunately that strategy would keep us stuck in dreadful jobs and/or a too small lives. So here we go – I am a/an…
Obsessive Learner: learning is my top strength and reading one of my greatest pleasures. If I won the lottery, I would not buy a Lamborghini – I would enroll in multiple coach training programs. I bring all my learning to our sessions, and can pull ideas from hundreds of sources so we can find what will work for you.
Intuitive Empath: I usually have a sense of what others are feeling, and have always had very strong intuition. Often I can feel what you can’t say, and can use my intuition to get to the deeper truth of a situation.
Strategic Futurist: I freaking love visioning the future, talking about the future, and reading about what the future might look like. Even I think this is a weird strength, but a useful one – I can envision the happy, satisfied, fulfilled future version of you, and use my strength for strategy to help you get there.
Activator: I believe the best learning comes through action, and am great at helping design actions that you will actually take.
While working together, I will help you to see your own gifts and how you can use them to help others. (Trust me, if I can do this, so can you.)
Degrees & Certifications
- Certified Martha Beck Life Coach
- Certified Kaizen-Muse Creativity Coach
- Modern Day Muse Group Facilitator
- Master of Accounting, University of Southern California
- Bachelor of Accounting, University of Southern California
My Story
Twelve years ago (at 25), I was absolutely miserable, working in a job I hated, emotionally wounded and unable to really find any kind of joy in my life. I looked successful – I had earned a Master’s degree (in accounting! What was I thinking?), I was working for a fortune 500 company, earning a decent salary, and had lots of friends to enjoy my free time with. But I was internally so miserable I can barely even think about it now without cringing. I came from a really messed up family with a sadistic, untreated mentally ill father; all of us were still in deep denial about just how bad things were – I had fled 2,000 miles away at the first opportunity. I had done everything I was ‘supposed’ to do, and my life just sucked beyond belief. The thought of living another forty years working in a meaningless job, with wonderful friends I couldn’t authentically connect with, internally miserable, struggling with a lifelong eating disorder just made me want to give up.
Desperate for any kind of relief, I started reading self-help books, and it was Martha Beck’s Finding Your Own North Star that really spoke to me. I was reading it on a week-long cruise to the Mexican Riviera with my best friend, who was thrown into some kind of ship-induced narcolepsy and was generally unavailable for any kind of activity. It was on that cruise that I made a vow to myself – I would spend all the energy I had previously put into achieving what ‘looked’ right into finding my own true path, whatever it turned out to be.
This began what I think of as my ‘healing journey’– a whole hell of a lot of therapy (thank you, God!), church ministry, dance, yoga, meditation, energy work, dieticians, anger release workshops, coaching, hypnotherapy – you name it, I tried it. In 2010 I went to Martha’s workshop with horse whisperer Koelle Simpson, and discovered that though I had done so much in terms of healing, my basic way of relating to life was still a relationship based on fear. So I spent a year in a coaching group focused on living intentionally, and took several classes in self-defense to work on my own personal power issues. I started moving towards the things that truly brought me joy, and finding things that called to my soul. I became a Muse workshop leader, and discovered the true meaning of “doing without doing” – something I had always assumed was a load of new-agey crap.
In the beginning of 2011, I developed a deep, deep longing to go on Martha’s African STAR (Self-Transformation Awareness Retreat). Financially, it was an insane idea. I was terrified of traveling to Africa alone – my most adventurous solo trip to date was Canada, not exactly what I would call living on the edge – and terrified of baring my soul to twelve strangers in the middle of the African wilderness. The longing outweighed the fear and I went, and it changed my life. One of Martha’s quotes on that trip was, “A miserable life first seeks safety. A wonderful life first seeks truth.” Since I returned, I’ve been seeking and acting on my own truth. Some days this is a tiny thing, such as admitting to myself that I’d rather stay home than go to some function I agreed to go to (whether I go or not, I’ve found just acknowledging the reality is very liberating). Sometimes this has meant recognizing that the creativity coaching program I pursued and achieved certification with is not…quite…right for me, even though I’ve told everyone I know this is my blissful next step. Sometimes this has meant quitting my corporate job, cashing out my retirement savings and trusting that I’m going to support myself financially without slowly killing my soul. Sometimes it means showing up authentically, vulnerable, socially awkward, but open to the person in front of me (those are the REALLY scary times). I followed the path of safety for a long time, and it truly was miserable and still never felt safe. My own path of truth is terrifying, liberating, joyful even on the darkest day.