The Poster Child

Doing Everything "Right"

The plan was simple. Go to school. Get good grades. Get a real job. Build a real life.

I followed it perfectly. I was the poster child for it. Type-A. Overachiever. Athlete. Honors. Involved in everything. I did it all the way I was told to.

Then I graduated, took a fast-paced event planning and marketing job because it felt important and flashy, and a year later got laid off. The formula I was given didn't mention anything about that part.

By the summer of 2011, I had a master's degree on the wall but couldn't get a "real job." So I ended up working my old college job for just enough money to put gas in my car and keep my phone on. I couldn't figure out what had gone so wrong, when I had done everything "they" (society, culture, parents, etc) told me to do.

Then in 2012, I was on a hike one day, trying to clear my head, when my phone rang. An interpersonal communications class needed an emergency sub for the fall semester, but the only thing was I didn't love teaching. I hadn't really enjoyed it during grad school, but I needed a job, and a sub gig was a job. So, I said yes.

Then I walked into the classroom and something I wasn't expecting happened.

First of all, I discovered I do love teaching. I just didn't love doing it while working full-time and going to grad school. The second thing I discovered was that these students were still fully bought into the same prescription that I had just broken free from. The same one I'd been the poster child for. Go to school. Get the degree. Get the job. Have a successful and happy life.

I couldn't unsee it.

So when I started teaching them the curriculum from the textbook, I also started teaching something else underneath the textbooks. You see, communication studies focuses almost entirely on how we speak to other people. There's maybe one chapter, sometimes one section, on how we speak to ourselves. And that's the part that is most important! You can know every communication tool in the book, but if you can't examine your own ego, your own identity, your own beliefs...then you will NOT be able to sustain real change. You'll end up in the same old patterns and be confused as to why nothing is changing. 

That was the moment my teaching philosophy changed. The sub gig I "didn't really want" turned into a 15+ year career because it showed me that I do love teaching; I just wasn't teaching the stuff I was passionate about before. 

When The Program Broke

Getting Back to the Source

Long before any of this, I was raised in a house where "metaphysical talk" was just... normal. My parents grew up where religious beliefs were pushed onto them and decided not to pass that on to their children. What they passed on instead was something simpler. "There is something bigger than you. Your job is to explore it. You have the freedom to do that however makes sense. Be kind. Be mindful of the energy you put out, because it comes back around."

We had bookshelves of "New Age" authors like Wayne Dyer, Louise Hay, Eckhart Tolle, Edgar Cayce, Brian Weiss. Books on dream interpretation, ancient Egypt. Oracle decks. Angel cards. My parents even had our birth charts done and talked about them with us when we got older. The library was endless, and the conversations were too.

I didn't think any of it was special. It was just what was around. Like furniture in the house. Then I got older, my energy was redirected into the formula for success and upward mobility: school, grades, college, a successful career. So I wasn't rejecting any of the "spiritual stuff" I grew up with; I just wasn't really reaching for it. 

But in 2010, the "formula for success" started to crumble.

I was finishing the comprehensive exams for graduate school when a long-term romantic relationship ended abruptly. The timing was awful, and the grief was more than I knew how to handle. I experienced depression for the first time in my life. I had always thought depression was "just in your head." It is NOT. It is real. And I had no idea what to do with it.

The thing that pulled me out of it? Energy work, also known as Reiki.

Energy work became the door for the journey back to myself. I couldn't have explained it to you at the time. My analytical mind had no framework for what was actually happening to me. No empirical evidence. No peer-reviewed studies. Just the simple fact that it was working. And that was the first time I had to make peace with the fact that not everything in life can be measured, controlled, and predicted.

I had spent my entire adult life trying to think my way through everything. And the thing that finally helped was something I could not think my way through.

The years that followed had more of these. Detours I didn't see coming. Money so tight I was counting cents. Unexpected grief. Hidden shame. And stretches of career where I had no idea what I was building towards.

Every time, what put me back together was not the latest book or the next plan. It was returning to the simple principles I started learning as a kid. The power of energy, language, and belief. 

I started studying all of it as an adult, this time on purpose. Neuroscience to bridge the analytical mind. Psychology to understand the patterns. Metaphysics to go beyond what our eyes can see. The work I was doing on myself was the work I would eventually teach. I just didn't know it yet.
 

HOW THIS WORK CAME TO BE

Sharing What I Learned With Others

By 2015, I was about three years into teaching full-time and noticing something. The more I studied the metaphysical interconnectedness, the less the institution of academia was going to let me weave it all together. I could teach the "communication" part, but I wouldn't have space to teach the rest.

So I started teaching it on the side, outside the classroom.

The first workshops were small. Ten people, sometimes fifteen. The basics. Mindfulness. The power of presence. How to use your breath to ground yourself. Nothing flashy. I figured I was just one more person teaching things people had been teaching for thousands of years.

But the feedback I was receiving surprised me.

People kept telling me the same things. That I had explained something in a way that "finally made sense to them." That I had reframed something they had been stuck inside for years. That they walked out of our sessions feeling like they had their power back. They kept saying it. And I kept being confused by it, because I really didn't think I was doing anything special.

Then I realized why it was landing. I was teaching people what I had healed in myself. The work I had been doing on my own life s had become teachable without my noticing. I knew how to do it for other people because I had done it for myself.

By 2018, I took the leap and made it official. I created my business. I started officially coaching one-on-one and connecting with people all over the world.

For the first time, I was teaching what was actually mine to teach. I stopped trying to fit who I was into these labels/containers made by someone else.  And what had started as a side project slowly became the thing I was here to do.

Since then, the work has taken me into rooms I didn't expect to be in. I've spoken at the Pentagon and on military bases overseas. I've shared stages with Dr. Shefali Tsabary and psychic medium John Edward. I've created courses for LinkedIn Learning and even took the stage at Gary Vaynercuk's VeeCon conference. None of it was the plan.

THE EVERYDAY HUMAN PART

Where You'd Find Me Outside of Work

I am a homegrown Southern California girl. I love spending time outside on a hiking trail or at the beach.  One thing about me: I travel as often as I can. Different cultures, different ways of being and living. It's the easiest way to remember how vast the world actually is, and how much I don't know.

I'm a forever student, always learning something. Astrology. Human Design. Greek Mythology. You'll often catch me at a seminar where I can soak in some wisdom. Whether it's Gabor Mate or Eckhart Tolle, I'll be there front row, scribbling notes in my journal. 

Lastly, I love concerts and live music. I'm a big movie person, especially sci-fi, action, and dramas. If I had to choose, I'd say my favorite movie is Star Wars. All of them. Why do I love it? Because the Force is energy. Energy is everything.