She spent a lifetime striving, fixing, achieving, and holding everything together. Until she realised that sometimes the bravest choice is simply choosing yourself.
Let her tell her story, in her own words.
The resilience of human beings is astounding.
I have always been fascinated by people’s stories the lives they have lived, the things they have survived, the choices they have made, and the ways they have found their way back to themselves. Stories connect us. They remind us that, beneath our individual experiences, there is something profoundly human that we share.
That connection can create compassion, hope, and even change.
For me, love has little to do with the thinking mind. I understand love as a deep connection something we feel, perceive, and experience within ourselves and with one another.
I didn’t have an easy childhood, but I didn’t have a horrific one either. I am grateful for what my parents taught me and for what they provided. And yet, I have spent much of my life unfucking my programming.
Anxious. Worried. Perfectionistic. Obsessive. People-pleasing. Competitive.
These parts of me developed in an attempt to be seen, heard, valued, and loved. For years, they ran the show. And while they helped me survive and achieve, they also made intimate relationships difficult and left me struggling with self-compassion and self-confidence.
There were invisible chains attached to my spirit, yet I was still called to succeed.
The problem was, I didn’t have the foundation of love, support, and guidance that I needed to know how.
So I made sacrifices. I made mistakes. I fell down and got back up.
Again and again.
I became very good at making lemonade out of lemons.
I was told I wasn’t smart. Pretty girls couldn’t be smart.
I believed it for a while.
I was told I was too sensitive to be a social worker.
I believed that for a while, too.
I was told to make do with what I had and be grateful for it. I was told that many of the things I felt driven to do were a waste of time.
I believed those things until I didn’t.
At 19, I got married.
The marriage gave me two beautiful daughters, and I believed I was doing what I was supposed to do: creating a family, building a home, creating a “real life.”
But it happened too soon, and it wasn’t with the right partner.
I was living a life beyond my years. We were broke often. Nine years later, I felt an overwhelming pull to leave. It felt like life or death.
I craved education. I craved travel. I craved a bigger life.
What I got instead was three jobs and the responsibility of raising my children as a single parent.
Then I married again.
This time, I was able to dive deeply into education, training, and social services. I obtained three university degrees and began building a career as a social worker and therapist. My third daughter arrived along the way.
For 14 years, I built a life while living alongside a darkness I could only glimpse.
Eventually, it all collapsed in a maelstrom of betrayal.
And once again, I had to begin again.
Another marriage followed. Seven years later, I realized something important: my resilience was waning.
I needed to choose myself.
And I needed to choose my children.
That meant confronting the people-pleaser inside me, the woman who had spent years trying to keep everyone happy, safe, and comfortable.
She was exhausted.
She was unwell.
And she was done.
Rinse and repeat.
I continued moving forward, but something was changing. I began studying yoga, energetics, and somatics. I gained recognition in my field and became involved in professional networks. I began integrating yoga and somatic practices into my counselling and psychotherapy work.
My passion for program development, evaluation, and facilitation continued to grow.
So did my sense of purpose.
My life fell apart three separate times. Likely more, it the truth be known.
And three separate times, I picked myself up and started again.
I have come to understand that I am compelled toward a life of purpose and meaning.
That same drive led me to write two books in two years.
The first, Bare Bones: Secrets, Lies, and Substances, explores healing inherited trauma. Writing it required me to gut myself and lay my experiences bare for the community.
I felt compelled to share my story because I believe that if something I have lived through can help another person, then it has meaning.
I shared each chapter with my mother and my three daughters as I completed it. There were tears. There was anger. There was love.
And somehow, through the telling of the story, we found more of one another.
We found forgiveness.
We found love.
My second book, Divinely Badass, is an inspirational collection for women. I interviewed remarkable women from my community and asked them the same questions about life, love, and the meaning of success.
Their answers reminded me of something I already knew but sometimes forgot:
There is no single way to be a successful woman.
There is no single way to build a meaningful life.
And there is no age at which we are finished becoming.
Today, I live alone in a small village, where I offer psychotherapy and somatic psychotherapy to people who feel compelled to understand themselves more deeply and live with greater self-compassion.
My approach is compassionate, direct, and informal.
I combine traditional talk therapy which helps us develop insight and reflection—with somatic work that invites us to experience change through the body.
I believe we are emotional, mental, and physical beings. These parts of us are not separate. What happens in one affects the others.
Our bodies carry experiences.
Our nervous systems respond to our lives.
And sometimes healing requires more than understanding our stories intellectually. Sometimes we need to experience something differently in the body.
My work incorporates breathwork, guided meditation, and The Boyd Method™ practices I have developed and integrated into my approach to help people regulate their nervous systems and work with emotion without becoming consumed by the story attached to it.
I am so passionate about this work that I was accepted into the University of Kentucky’s doctoral program in Social Work, where I am focusing on the integration of evidence-informed somatic principles into social work practice and their application to clinical supervision.
At this stage of my life and career, my focus is shifting.
I am becoming a gatekeeper of my profession.
Through clinical supervision, continued education, research, and practice, I want to help shape the next generation of social workers and therapists.
And now I am 57.
I have lived some life. I have travelled extensively. I have pursued education. I have had spiritual experiences that are difficult to put into words.
My daughters and grandchildren are my heart, and we spend a great deal of time together.
But perhaps the most surprising thing I am learning at this stage of my life is that what I once called boredom is actually peace.
Peace.
For someone who spent much of her life striving, achieving, fixing, worrying, anticipating, and pleasing, peace can feel strangely unfamiliar.
Sometimes I can feel the old people-pleaser inside me fighting for her life.
She wants to make sure everyone is happy.
She wants to explain herself.
She wants to be liked.
She wants to make sure no one is disappointed.
And when she appears, I try not to judge her.
Instead, I imagine putting my hand on her shoulder.
I tell her:
Thank you.
You worked so hard.
You kept me safe.
But I’ve got this now.
I am still kind.
I am still thoughtful.
I still care deeply about people.
But I am no longer beholden to pleasing them.
I no longer accept unacceptable behaviour.
There is a difference.
I spent much of my life trying to become enough for other people.
Now, I am learning what it feels like to simply be enough for myself.
Perhaps that is the greatest freedom of all.
Not becoming someone new.
Not fixing everything that happened.
Not erasing the past.
But finally being able to look at the woman who survived it all and say:
I see you.
I love you.
And you don’t have to prove anything anymore.
