I have a really adventurous spirit. I'm a wild child. When I was eleven I dreamt that I would grow up and have lots of tattoos and that I would be friends with Madonna! I was always really rebellious as a kid. A Rebel Without A Cause! No one could tell me what to do. If you told me I couldn't do something, then I really had to do it.
I was a gymnast and I was always doing flips off the couch, or the hay loft into a huge pile of hay below! Yep, hay loft. I lived on a farm in Illinois Amish country in a small town of 1200 people. I loved it. It was a fairy tale. This is where my connection with nutrition and living naturally was born. But right before I started Jr. High my parents moved to the "big city" of Columbia, MO. It really did seem like a city to me with 70,000 people there.
This is when things started to change. All the sudden I just felt like I didn't fit in. Have you ever felt like that? I thought that maybe it was because we moved, but years later I still felt that way. What was wrong with me? I went from a really happy kid to feeling kinda alone and sad. I had no self esteem, I started getting really body conscious and my rebellious streak took a turn for the worse. In high school, I was dating all the wrong boys,"sneaking out" all the time, I skipped class (still managed to thrive at school somehow) and started smoking cigs. Yikes! What happened to the confident little gymnast that was back flipping off balconys and wanted to be Madonna's bff?
By the end of high school I was doing pretty well. I was in all the advanced placement classes. I seemed to have "found" myself. I had some great girl friends - we were the "cool" girls. We bought all our clothes at the thrift store and loved skater boys and band parties. I was flipping through the air again - I was a springboard diver. I also had a really cool job. I worked at the university as a lab technician and performed DNA isolations among other nerdy scientific things. I felt like a mad scientist! It was awesome.
Then life through me another curve ball. I started college to pursue my degree in Psychology. I always wanted to know what made people tick and I really wanted to help others (think I was really wanting to understand what made me tick and it was also me who needed help!). But, something happened to me when I went from small class rooms and lots of teacher interaction to huge lecture halls - all of the sudden I couldn't learn. I seriously thought I had a learning disability. I went from AP student to learning impaired overnight. After about two years on and off of college and practically failing every class I took, I dropped out. I was so ashamed and embarrassed and felt like I would never amount to anything.
During college I had started at another job as a runner for bands at the local music venue. I worked my way up and before you know it I was "running" the show as manager of promotions and manager of the club. Working there was easy for me and so I felt pretty good about it. I got to meet famous musicians and bands like - Henry Rollins, The Descendents, Chuck Berry, GLove and Special Sauce, Social Distortion, The Lemonheads, Jonny Cash, Courney Love (there is more to this story!) Ben Harper, Wilco...
Despite all this I was still an insecure girl and a push-over and to top it off I had gained a bunch of weight working at the club! I just wasn't taking care of myself. Arrrggggg! But, somehow I met and fell in love and long story short I moved to Los Angeles so my husband could work on his dream of being an actor and I could work on my "new" dream of music industry executive. Straight away, I got a job working for Courney Love as her personal assistant! I told you there was more! My old boss at the club in Missouri had gotten me a job with her manager and her manager hired me to work for Courtney directly. Oh dear. That's when I said enough is enough.
I was such a push over that it was easy for me to get taken advantage of. I pretty much cried myself to sleep everyday I worked for her. BUT, in the end, working for Courtney Love was the BEST job I ever had. It made me realize I really needed to work on myself. I needed to figure out why I had no confidence, why my life wasn't going as planned, and learn how to take charge of my life and find what really made me happy, smile and feel fulfilled. It made me realize I needed to embrace my uniqueness and that I could find my own way of helping people and making a difference.
Nearly 10 years.... a ton of self-help books, a life-coach, a therapist, a hypnotherapist, an Indian Guru, AND getting certified as a pilates instructor, nutritional counselor, personal trainer and NLP/life coach later - I did. I found my own way. I lost 20 pounds, and gained confidence and self esteem along the way. I have also started my own lifestyle coaching business so I can help my fellow "wild spirits" get past what's keeping them "stuck", embrace their uniqueness, and help them to get healthy, happy and live their dreams. I'm a Rebel With A Cause and YOU are my cause!
