I am a Certified Recovery and Life Coach. I am an Executive Director of a Recovery Center- Journey to Recovery Community Center. I have a grave and real understanding of what it takes to entirely transform your life. I have transformed my own, from codependence to authentic and aware love, living, parenting and leadership. I understand how substances sneak their way in to relationships and lives. I understand what it takes to meet yourself and heal those very deep (and usually shameful) wounds that keep you from accepting yourself. Awareness of your wounds and obstacles, how they actually affect your mind, body and heart, while learning how to take a good, honest look at them is the root of the work I offer in my coaching, book and the blogs here. In the coaching work, we discover together what you really want out of your life, and we work together to make it happen.
If you are at a breaking point, read my books and the blogs here on the site. We all need a good “F*ck That” moment to get us started! It is a great place to start- to just accept that what you have been doing isn’t working and come hell or high water, you are going to make a new and better and more aware, way.
I wrote my first book after I was heartbroken and repeating all kinds of patterns, and had to do the hard work to figure out why, and STOP. That was a painful process and I needed a lot of coaching, therapy and support. It was worth it! After I wrote my book I started coaching people outside the recovery center- leaders, business owners, successful people who were still facing the same snags in their lives over and over- avoidant love, stuck in career, anxious love, toxic attraction, and more. I now coach people from all walks of life, with all different kinds of trauma, history, successes, failures. People with substance use problems and people who love people with substance use problems. One place I love to help people are those who go from every kind of ruin- emotional, financial, career, to success and stability all the way around.
I wrote my second book after working on the front lines for the last three years helping people stop abusing their substance of choice. I put all the pieces that actually work, in one workbook. I was fed up with piecemealing resources to help people, so I put it all together. It is so incredibly rewarding to see it work, every day, in real time. I want it to work for you too.
Change is possible.
More info about me:
I am a 44 year old single mom of three young adults- teens and early twenties. We live in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. Yes, that’s a real place. I was a livestock farmer for ten years, but as I’ve grown, my career has transformed too. Today I am an Executive Director of a non-profit that helps people recover from substance use. Six years ago it became undeniably clear that my marriage was doing more damage to all of us, especially the kids, than a divorce would. That was the beginning of my transformation of everything I believed about success, healthy families, healthy relationships and healing. I stopped living to please, stopped being driven by the outward need of external approval.
No more of that.
I used to observe others, in awe, at what I perceived as their own internal comfort and their ability to drive themselves based on intuition and worth. I saw people with boundaries, or an ability to ruffle feathers when they should (and not second guess themselves, they were RIGHT), and it seemed so foreign and unattainable to me. Living that way seemed so far away from the small and shameful woman I was. When I decided to divorce, I started to pay attention to my own self, my needs, and how to trust my intuition. It’s not selfish to have needs, or to say no, did you know that?! I went from struggling financially, emotionally and physically, to fully supporting myself and my kids to live with everything we all need from the inside out.
Letting Go of Half Love
In 2020, an on-again-off-again relationship I was in ended- er, sort of ended. We didn’t speak for four months and then slowly found our way back, fell into the dynamic again for a short time, but this time, I saw it for what it actually was, words not actions, hopes with no future, and finally let it go for good. It busted my heart. Again. After my divorce I had been going to therapy and working on myself, for nearly two years and I thought I was ready for the next relationship. I truly believed I had found my forever person. Some say that your relationships are a reflection of how much healing you have done and after this experience I agree. Time to grow again, I guess. This heartbreak offered an opportunity for an even deeper dive into why I am the way I am and to focus on healing the parts of me that were leading into unhealthy relationships. I learned a ton and healed even more. I feel so good about the process I used I wrote a book to share it with you all. You can buy it right here on the website or you can go to Amazon and buy it there. It is written as a book and a workbook, so you can really personalize to your own life. I am a busy mom, I wrote it the way I needed to read it- clear, organized and step-by-step. It isn’t just for women, either- many men have found it helpful and healing, too. I hope this book can help you, the way it has so genuinely helped me. I’ll never let anyone take the best and leave the rest, ever again.
Since I wrote the books and published this website I have found love and it goes to show that the hard work, the healing, and the committing to our own authentic hearts and needs, really does work.
The Long Version of About Me:
My children and I live on our 188 acre farm that my (now ex) husband and I bought ten years ago. It was a wild scrape to get the money to buy it, a story in and of itself I’ll write about sometime. For now, I’ll describe it as truly the most beautiful place on earth. For me. This is our HOME. I knew this was where my kids needed to grow up, to count on this home-base as they developed their minds and hearts and place in the world. It is no joke to own a farm with this much land as a single mom of three kids, let me tell you. I am not a trust-fund lady. I fought with every shred of fortitude and fear to keep this farm in my divorce. In the midst of the worst of it I would lie awake at night and wonder how on earth I was going to manage feeding the chickens and the kids, or pay the daily expenses, or sign the kids up for summer camps and still buy the egg cartons and fix the tractor and more and more and more, always more.
Every day, I figured it out, even when I thought I couldn’t. The farm, aside from the exhausting stress I had to carry to make it all go, offered gifts and miracles we will never forget. Gifts that shaped our beings and gifts of the constant and grounding cycles of life and death. Gifts of purpose. Gifts that showed my children to dream big and never limit themselves for the stifling life of simple security. Gifts that built resilience we will carry forward forever. I watched my children catch newborn piglets, raise them with love, and understand that food is all about life and death and loving hard and letting go. Food should be loved, and appreciated for its sacrifices. My kids know this, in their bones and souls and hearts. They know it in their hands too, because farming is work that can only be done by manual, hard labor. There were days I’d marvel at us working together or working- um, frustratingly, to collect and wash the 2,500 eggs from our 3,000 hens or process the turkeys or pack our products for market or any of the other many farm chores. These moments were daily reminders of how important it is to appreciate every perfect AND ugly moment of this precious life we are given. Farming is love- it is life and loyalty and heartbreak and spirituality and trust. You learn when to fight for the dying runt and when to let go.
My Marriage was Dead
Farming was, in a way, what showed me that my marriage was dead and it was time to let go. Letting that marriage go was the first step towards a real and honest and self respecting life, for all four of us, the kids and I. The stronger I became the more I kept marching away from everything I used to think was normal and okay, but was actually harmful and wrong. I went to therapy. I started telling the truth of my struggles to family and friends and asking for help. Asking for help is really hard to do, but you can’t get better without it. I began to see glimmers of a person inside myself I actually liked. I began to understand the origins of my dark and deep-rooted self loathing and shame. As I came to understand those big insecurities, they began to subside. I grew and began to dream bigger dreams for us, and feel more confident to claim my space and voice in the world. Through that transition I came to see that our farm business could not support three growing, thriving kids and I had to let it go and do something else. That was scary as fuck. But I did it. I got hired at a local cheese factory as the buyer and I leased my farmland to other famers. Now I had work with a consistent paycheck and health insurance. Did I love the job? Hell no. Was I very good at it? Uh.. not really. I knew it was a stepping stone and so I stuck it out with my eyes open for what was next. It took nearly five years to find my place and purpose. There are ways to nurture your heart and live well and find the balance of all things that feed your soul and your bank account but you have to believe it and focus on it and just keep pushing. It is not a pretty ride, in fact it sucks, but it exists, I know it now. Having a job I loved that worked for me and supported us felt so far away for me for so long but I am now here to say that it is possible, it really really is. I can’t wait to help you march toward your good life too, and figure out when when to fight and when to let go. Everything used to feel impossible all the time. Now it feels that way only some of the time. I hope these blogs fill you with ideas for how to be happy and to keep moving forward, even when everything feels absolutely abhorrently hopeless.
The Fears that Come Along with Divorce
If you are considering divorce, read this.
There were a lot of fears that came a long with divorce- like- supporting my children alone. But I have made it even when I thought I couldn’t. I am the full time and entire provider for my three teenagers. They are bright and confident, and I am proud to say- emotionally intelligent people. We have our dramas but we talk it out. All of it. My kids are strong and aware, and that is not by accident. When I was with my ex, the father of my children, I was clinging to the idea that a whole, miserable family was “better” than anything divorce could bring. It was exhausting and confusing. One Christmas Eve after an especially disturbing argument with my ex, I came to the stark realization that I did not want my children to ever have a marriage or relationship that resembled anything like the one they saw between their dad and me. I did not want them to have to pretend, ever. I did not want them to ever endure the fake love, the silent treatment, the manipulation, the drinking, the excuses or the general, horrible misery. This realization was the beginning of my waking the fuck up, into finding and forgiving myself and also, expecting MORE of myself. I wish that I could say it has been a beautiful and freeing journey of peaceful self-discovery and empowerment, but that would be fake and a crude and ego filled lie. I mean, yes, it has been beautiful and freeing and empowering and all the peaceful and feel good words that are so often used to describe what happens after divorce. But it has also been the biggest, shittiest, most terrifying, longest and painful dumpster fire. I’ve had to face every kind of emotional, mental, physical and financial trauma that I did not foresee or ever could have imagined. I have wandered around numb, or aching, or sick, or without pants, a lot. What makes it all beautiful is the ugliness. What makes it meaningful is how just the act of getting your pants on some days, is an act of heroism, an act of progress, a step toward a new reality. I dared to start looking. I turned to stare at what was dark and broken, and my change became meaningful and helpful and rewarding. It shows today, in every part of my life. It shows in my work. It shows in the way I keep my home and how it feels. It shows in the friendships and loves I foster. Most importantly, in shows up in the clear and growing hearts of my kids, who are not confused. That has been worth every moment of this savage, ugly awakening.
Transformation after Divorce
The purpose of this blog is to tell the truth of the transformation I have gone through (and still am), to keep hope for all of you making the courageous attempt to wake the fuck up too. Since divorce, I fell madly in love. I was not fully chosen by that man, for lots of reasons covered in my book and probably some blog posts coming up. I have no regrets though, and after all the heartbreak, I’m okay. That relationship taught me incredible things about attachment styles, trauma bonds, love languages, discernment, deep seeded trauma, emotional (un) availability, being fucking naïve and best- how to shine the light on my own unhealthy and toxic traits and how to understand them and heal them enough to change and stop being that way. This is not to take the full blame for the failure of that relationship but to say I do understand my part, and I understand his, too. Best, I understand how to not repeat the pattern again. I will not meet the same man in a different body and think that is the right kind of person for me. I want to write this blog because I think that my story is very similar to many, and writing about it helps. I have survived. I have become aware of why I have the tendencies I do and how to heal.
It does get better.
It gets better than better. Writing this blog is meaningful to me because I am here to say that even without a healthy partner or relationship yet, I have found everlasting love. It is as beautiful as much as it is the fucking worst. Its everything, good and bad, and it’s mine, and I am in charge of how I manifest it, every day. I have found love and it is real, and it makes me whole. I can’t call it “self-love” because that term just pisses me off. It’s not that fucking simple. I have found a grounding, in my core, that allows me to be and feel all sorts of things and still remain standing. I can be vulnerable, exhausted, scared or fulfilled but never broken, not like before. No matter what, this new love I have, which is actually deep self-acceptance and understanding, allows me to shine on, brilliant and stronger every day. I don’t “love myself” in that I think I’m awesome. I KNOW myself now. I respect and understand myself. I am patient and forgiving (most of the time). I am with myself how I am with my children, colleagues and friends and how I hope I will get to be with another person someday. But I’m not in a hurry, because I’m not scared, I’m not hollow, I don’t need. I’m actually satisfied with the deepest parts of who I am. There’s nothing to hide, nothing to be ashamed of. I have worked hard to get here, and it feels amazing, because I can’t be broken in the same way as I have before, by outside people or situations. Even if my biggest fear happens again- if I am abandoned by those I choose to love, I will remain standing, and I’ll be okay.
Being Alone
Fear of abandonment happens in early childhood, the beginning of it. My experiences so far have helped me strike at the core of why I had that fear, and hold it in my focus, study it, and let it go. I have control in my life now, because I’m not acting from a place of fear or protection of that insidious old wound. I tore it open and dared to stare and hurt and bleed it out and then- I got better. I’m writing this because you can heal too. Aren’t so many of us terrified of being abandoned, betrayed, heartbroken or worse, misunderstood? Left. Alone. Not the kind of alone we revel in when the kids go to dad’s or a sleepover and we watch bad TV with chocolate and wine and don’t do the laundry. That alone is the best. I am talking about the EMPTY alone. The alone that can happen whether you are “in” a relationship or not. The sinister, soul sucking alone. The alone where we play the tapes in our mind that tell us horrible things about the most fragile pieces of ourselves, over and over and over again. The alone that makes looking in the mirror feel like an invasion to our shame and secrets. The dark alone. The dangerous alone, the stuck alone. The alone we lie to ourselves about, to justify staying in unhealthy relationships. Alone. What a horrible place to be, until you figure out that there are ways to never be that empty alone, sad alone, worthless alone, ever again. Alone changes when you heal. It swivels from dark and depleting, to light and joy. Alone becomes protection, stability, and clear eyes for who you are and who you will let in. There’s no angry edge, because mistrust of others has become trust of self and there’s comfort there. It’s exciting, energizing and full of hope.
This blog is a love story, of a thousand different kinds of loves.
Love, as you all know, is not static, or linear, or even very pleasant sometimes. It certainly can be lonely. But I am never the empty alone anymore, I am always solid in my heart. That’s new. It’s not that I don’t yearn for a partner, the safe connection of true understanding, but, it doesn’t come from a place of need or pain. I have power in a beautiful way now, a handle on myself. It’s kind and raw and healthy. The last six years have been the best, worst time, and I have endured things that no one should have to face. Here I am though, ahead of it and thriving. I am excited to share all the shit and all the success with you. Also, I’ll never tell you to go “love yourself” in this blog. That’s such an impossible oversimplification of everything we each are searching for. I will share how I am learning to keep my dignity and heart in the driver’s seat of my life, as I evolve into an even happier, kinder, sexier, more powerful (in a good way) version of myself. I hope you will enjoy these blogs, and that they bring you some inspiration and some comfort and some peace. Enjoy!
#divorce #strength #hope #healing #women #love #selfcare
