I’m an artist, dreamer, speaker, podcaster, and guide who deeply believes you have everything it takes to heal and create the life you want.
But that’s not at all where I started.
Here’s my story…
My Story
January 2015 was when I found myself in the emergency room for panic attacks.
It would be one of the absolute worst nights of my life, but it would also prove to be my initiation, the beginning of a journey home.
Before this experience, I thought life was…fine? I was going through all the motions spelled out for me: married, kids, serving in a church. In hindsight, there was plenty of anxiety, plenty of perfectionism, and a heart full of insecurities, but I just didn’t know any different.
Until it just didn’t work anymore.
I fell apart hard and scrambled at first trying to go back to what I knew, trying to put everything that was coming up to the surface back to where it came from. But as you can guess, or as you might know yourself, it just doesn’t work that way; you can’t un-see and un-hear pain and fear that loud and chaotic.
Over the next 10 years, I would spend plenty of time in therapist’s rooms, coaches’ zoom rooms, and the majority of my time studying anxiety, depression, trauma, and emotional health. While the early years were brutal, I was absolutely determined not only to heal and recover, but to help as many people as I could on the other side.
(I would literally write “I’m going to heal SO FREAKING HARD” in my notebook. Which doesn’t grammatically make sense, but you get it. I was convinced there was a way, even if I couldn’t see it.)
One of the first frameworks that needed dismantling was the context and culture I had been living in my whole life. “Raised in a conservative religious upbringing” doesn’t fully explain what it was like to reach an existential crisis brought on by realizing that your entire worldview had actually led you into almost complete disconnection from yourself, including your authenticity, preferences, and boundaries.
Cue faith crisis.
Actually, cue faith crisis WHILE enrolled in full-time ministry school WHILE raising two babies: 10/10 would not recommend.
I asked a lot of questions during those years and had to work hard distinguishing between genuine curiosity as I outgrew old beliefs and spiraling out in anxiety, fear, and doubt: a tricky endeavor if you’ve ever tried it.
The question that cut through the noise was this:
“What makes a healthy human?”
All my healing and growth pursuits were sifted through that question. Why? Because I was taught to ask totally different questions, either implicitly or explicitly. Questions like “What would please God?” “What’s God’s will for my life?” “What do those in authority say?” And even the typical adolescent-guiding question that I just hadn’t grown out out of yet: “What will other people think of me?”
I mean, I was so clearly not a healthy human at that point, with the anxiety and depression, strained relationships, as well as chronic symptoms that kept me in bed a lot. I had done everything I thought I was supposed to be doing as I sought the perfect answers to all of those questions above. And I was dying, or at least I felt like I was. I became obsessed with the question: so what IS a healthy human?
I remember hearing a verse from the Bible: “Jesus came that we might have life to the full.”
The full? Why was I so empty? Why were so many of us, in and out of church, so empty? How do healthy humans, full of life, feel/think/relate? How do they live their lives?
One day, I read another question in one of the many books I was going through, a book by Rachel Hollis… And this question changed my life:
“What are 10 things you’d like to say are true about your life 10 years from now?”
At that point, I remember thinking I didn’t even know you had a say in where your life was going. I thought life just happened. I was just focused on resolving this anxiety…
“Is this a question a healthy human, full of life would know how to answer?”
I wrestled with it, not knowing how to answer. (A hypervigilent nervous system’s BEST tactic is confusion, and I was a master at hypervigilance.)
I decided to approach it like an experiment.
What if I did know?
What if I wasn’t confused?
What would I say then?
I wrote down 10 things that I’d love to live out. Things like a healthy marriage, deep connection to my kids, deep friendships, a successful business, a secure attachment to God, healthy relationships with friends, and a healthy relationship with myself. Maybe I did know how to answer this question, maybe I did know who I was. A full-of-life woman, a mother, a leader.
And at the top of the list was the dream I thought I’d aged out of:
I am a songwriter, musician, performer. I am an artist.
I held the list in front of me, read through it, and cried.
“Here I am.”
I realized that somewhere in me, my blueprint for where I was meant to be was there all along.
And that list has become the reality that I live in now.
As it turns out, you can trust what lights you up. “What lights you up will lead you home,” as author Morgan Cecil says.
And thank God. I was finally on my way home.
I have come to deeply believe that this is exactly how God speaks to us—exactly how we identify what our purpose is.
And so as I began to live by this list of things I knew I authentically was and wanted to build, it breathed life into my healing journey. I was no longer looking at all these problems to solve; I was looking for what was in the way of my dreams, how to love it and love through it, and resolve it.
Over the years I have had tremendous success not only resolving anxiety and depression and so many chronic symptoms, but also helping others do the same through my coaching business.
My journey led me to intern for Laura Duncan, who founded The Compassion Method, an emotional healing modality that teaches people how to bring healing compassion to their inner world, creating peace, connection, and deep trust. I am a certified Compassion Method Consultant and it is the foundation of all I do.
I also pursued a certification in Muscle Music, a program created for Creatives by Ruby Rose Fox. I was THRILLED to learn this program even existed as it focuses on increasing nervous system capacity and mental health resilience specifically for artists.
Understanding the nervous system was a huge turning point for me personally, and it’s something I have had the privilege of teaching to hundreds of people. Both of my certifications represents concepts I have embodied through my own daily practice over the years, and I believe in them deeply.
I’m so thrilled to share that resolving anxiety and deep shame, connecting to my purpose and enjoying my family, life and business has been…magical. Walking others through the process is also so deeply beautiful. While I will always be highly sensitive (as most Creatives are!), knowing how to navigate that sensitivity and use it for connection and creativity feels like a true gift. I have recently been doing this as I’m working on my dream of recording a full album, and it’s been a joy to share the real life process of stepping toward all that my healing has led me toward (my own real dreams!) as I help others do the same.
It’s a beautiful life, and you get to live one, too.
How can I help?
I’m here to really living life to the full and help as many people live that way as possible through:
Teaching creatives how to sustainably create and perform while showing wild hospitality to all the emotions and experiences that can trip us up along the way. (It’s what lights me up!)
Empowering others to fall in love with their struggles as it clicks that every struggle is a lesson in becoming.
Helping people learn, grow, and consistently step toward visibility and expression, all while caring deeply for all the other parts of their lives as well.
Enough about me, let’s get you there too.