The tears started to well up the minute I finished my mascara. Shit. Now?! This mascara isn’t even waterproof was my first thought. But the more I tried to hold them in, the more they started to spill. Before I knew it..the dam that I had kept closed for so long had burst wide open.

I had just finished a beautiful, thought provoking conversation with a good friend who had lovingly - yet powerfully - reflected back to me that my belief in myself was nowhere near as strong as the belief I held for others.

Others were somehow always smarter, funnier, prettier..and more accomplished than I was. And she could tell by the way I had spoken to her that it wasn’t even a question in my mind - I had been treating this belief in others (and lack of belief in myself) as if it was a fact.

As I struggled to understand why I wasn’t able to see myself in the way others did I felt long forgotten memories starting to creep in. Memories of all the times I was dismissed, laughed at or told I wasn’t good enough.

Memories of all the times people I had trusted had betrayed me, laughed behind my back and even gone so far as to tell others things about me that simply weren’t true.

And it wasn’t just the memories that came flooding back in - all the emotions they evoked came right back with them. Emotions I had ignored, pushed down, avoided or simply pretended didn’t exist.

As I struggled to understand why these memories and emotions were suddenly coming back again out of nowhere, it dawned on me that they weren’t actually coming back. They had been there all along. And up until then, I had just done a great job avoiding them and resisting them.

But what we resist will persist. And the longer it persists, the stronger it becomes.

By resisting my emotions for so long and ignoring them instead of dealing with them, all I had really done was make them stronger. I had rationalized my way to being “just fine” because my mind was strong enough to convince me that if I believed that for long enough, it would become true. What’s that old adage? Fake it til you make it?

I was the queen of faking it. It’s pretty much how I got through all of my teenage years and a large part of my adult years.

And for a long time it actually worked. And in many ways, it even helped me survive and keep moving forward at a time when I couldn’t afford to stop.

What it didn’t do was actually heal the pain that was underneath all that emotion.

Mentally I had made myself strong enough to push all the negative thoughts and comments away and to some extent, had even forgotten all about them.

But my body still remembered. And it was internalizing each negative comment, each insult and each painful word that had been carelessly thrown my way. That’s why I was subconsciously still keeping myself hidden years after the actual incidents.

They couldn’t hurt, poke fun at or laugh at what they couldn’t see.

But in order to heal the pain, I had to let myself feel the pain. I also had to acknowledge the impact it had on me and realize that feeling hurt or upset by the memories didn’t mean the pain of the memories had somehow “won”. Or that I was weak for not being able to shut it out anymore. Quite the opposite actually.

True strength isn’t about ignoring what you’re feeling. It’s about embracing it, acknowledging it and accepting it. With that acceptance comes freedom.

Our mind and body are deeply connected and our healing is intertwined between the two . That’s why true healing occurs when our thoughts are aligned with the manifestations in our body.

In my case, all the thoughts, feelings and hurt that I thought I had “let go of’ was still running the show behind the scenes. Mainly because I hadn’t actually let it go, I had really just spiritually bypassed it all by using logic to explain my feelings away.

Every new and painful experience had prompted me to simply remind myself “hurt people hurt people”. Or - “they’re saying those things from a place of trauma, they don’t know what they’re doing”.

And while I still believe that’s completely true - I no longer allow other people’s own hurts, thoughts or experiences to be an excuse for their treatment of me. I still hold compassion for them - but I no longer hold any space for them. Not in my thoughts, and not in my life.

And I no longer use my mindset as a way to simply “power through things”. To me, mindset is more than just a way of thinking. It’s a way of BEING. Being so connected in mind, body and spirit that every experience - good and bad- is processed on a mental, emotional AND spiritual level.

So when I say I work with people on their mindset - I don’t just mean how they face the day or the thoughts they’re telling themselves.

Yeah that’s part of it. But for me, true mindset work also involves looking at the impact those thoughts are having on my client’s bodies and working together to heal and integrate that impact so they can emerge from any challenging or negative experience with more unwavering strength, confidence and resilience than they could have ever imagined for themselves.

And I truly believe that’s what makes me different from most mindset coaches .

I see every human as a force of nature. Some are like gentle ripples in the water. Others resemble giant crashing waves with the strength of the ocean propelling their every move. Still others have the power of a hurricane or spewing volcano and are capable of destroying almost anything in their path.

But the most powerful ones of all remind me of the sun.

They watch the ripples, waves, the high winds of a hurricane and molten lava spilling out of a volcano…and throughout it all, they never stop shining and their power never burns out.

I want to help you be the sun. I want you to be the biggest and brightest version of yourself. The power to do that is already in you…but you have to be willing to move past the clouds and fly a little higher to get back to the sunshine.

Trust your wings. Let yourself fly. I promise the view from above will be worth it.