“My personal struggles in life began as a child. I was woefully shy and afraid to speak in front of anyone except my immediate family. My grandmother would constantly remind me of my unsightly long arms and legs every time I saw her, reinforcing my low self confidence and negative self image.

Do you still hang on to the toxic words from people of authority in your life from years ago? 

Words that still drag you down when you think of them? 

Now years later I am empowered to shake off the words that wounded me and replace the toxic beliefs I once held, with ones that serve to uplift and strengthen.

We see the effects of having a negative self-image around us each day. As someone who loves to encourage and uplift others, I am often saddened when I hear others constantly criticising and under-estimating themselves. 

This is one of the reasons that led me to become a certified life coach, so I can be your cheerleader and bring out your amazing strengths.

I went into marriage thinking and hoping it would be happily ever after! (A girl can dream, right?)

Well, it wasn’t.

Some years later I found myself navigating a very difficult and painful divorce – one of the most emotional, painful and stressful experiences in life leading me into the depths of despair.

Maybe you have experienced the pain of a breakup where your whole world is turned upside down triggering all sorts of negative and unsettling emotions.

Breakups launch you into uncharted territory where uncertainty about the future, sadness and disruption take over. 

I later learned some shocking statistics about divorce that changed my perspective of it.

In the United States, there is one divorce approximately every 36 seconds. That’s nearly 2,400 divorces per day, 16,800 divorces per week and 876,000 divorces a year. And it doesn’t end with only first marriages, 60% of second marriages end in divorce and 73% of third marriages end in divorce.

With nearly 900,000 people experiencing the pain of divorce each year, I’ve made it one of my missions to help those people through the pain, and lessen the impact that I experienced in my own divorce.

At the time of my divorce, life was forcing me to take stock of things and create a new normal – like many of us are being forced to do right now with the effects of the Coronavirus. 

It was this stage in my life where I found myself needing to push a reset button. Fortunately, adversity builds emotional muscle and resilience. This led me to pursue my strong interest in personal development in an attempt to empower myself.

 In between coping with the tears, the heartache and the struggles to reinvent my life, I dove deep into reading and learning all I could about self development and psychology. 

As I traversed the path of learning more about myself and creating a new life, I began to think about a change of career. After all, my life was totally in ruins – so relocation and a career pivotfrom teaching into professional counselling was appealing.

After training as a Professional Counsellor, I set out working with people of all ages who were experiencing challenges in their lives. However, I found that the traditional way of counselling led my clients to spend most of our session time looking back at the past rather than looking forward and determining what the next steps are to a real solution.

This led me to changing my focus to life coaching, and I began to develop my own modern, forward-looking techniques based off of the proven counselling techniques I had learned over 5 years. Plus further study to gain life coaching credentials and certification.

Fast forward a few years, and I met a wonderful man who later became my second husband. This was a relationship that nourished my soul and one where I felt totally loved and accepted for being my true, authentic self. 

However, I quickly learned that when your life feels perfect, you need to embrace and enjoy every moment you get – because it can all be taken away as fast as it arrived.

My world was about to crash – and it did! And crash big time!

Tragedy struck.

The love of my life left for work one morning at 7am and three hours later I received a phone call that no one ever wants to receive. 

A fatal accident had taken his life, and there was no chance for me to say goodbye. 

This was the catalyst that plummeted me once again into the depths of despair. 

How could I go on alone? How was I going to be able to sort out everything? Was life even worth living?

My world had changed in an instant and robbed me of all my hopes and dreams for the future, stole my security and left me feeling abandoned, alone, afraid and overwhelmed with grief and the multitude of decisions that come with losing a loved one.

This led me to a deeper study of grief counselling and discovering ways to cope with the pain of losing a loved one. Self-care became an important focus in my life both physically and emotionally, and I learned many strategies and techniques that I now share with my clients to bring them out of despair and onto a path towards a healthy life, body, and mind.

Picking up your life and moving to a new area is incredibly stressful. Especially when one is not quite as young as they used to be – like I was!

There’s the real estate decisions, relocation process, leaving behind friends to start over in another country or area, selling your existing house, the difficulty of making new friends, and of course… job hunting so you can pay the bills but also try and work in a career you are passionate about. 

After the death of my second husband, I chose to move back to where my family lives. I needed the support network of my family to help get me through those dark and difficult times, and while family certainly helped, I found that the change of location served as an excellent ‘reset button’ moment for me.

It was a turbulent time, but as always, there was a way through it – I just needed some help to see the possibilities rather than a mountain of obstacles.

Change always opens new doors to new opportunities in your life. Through these 5 big chaotic moments of change in my life, I found that in the end I was led to serve others as a life coach and help transform the lives of my clients to discover their own journey trajectories towards success and happiness that they deserve.