My Story
People ask me all the time: how could you possibly understand what I'm going through?
Let me tell you.
When I was very young, I knew things other people didn't. I knew about the people who had lived in our houses before us. I would pray light through people who were sick. And I was told, in no uncertain terms by my loving Christian grandparents, that what I was doing was wrong, it was witchcraft. I was terrified, terrified of being burned alive, which is what I was told happened to witches, and then burning in hell forever. So I did the only thing I knew to do to stay safe. I shut it all down. I pushed my gifts so far underground that I forgot they were even there. For about thirty years.
That's really where my story begins — because this is where I learned that I had abandoned myself.
The childhood I had to grow up fast in
My childhood didn't leave much room to be a child. Both of my parents married five times. I had four stepdads, three stepmoms, and ten step-siblings coming and going. I learned to cook by the time I was eight, and I spent most of my time cooking, cleaning, and watching the younger ones. I needed a parent. Instead, I was one. When my mom was single we were on welfare, and I still remember lugging a five-pound bag of potatoes home from the store that was nearly as big as I was.
I also experienced neglect, trauma, and even sexual abuse as a child from four different family members, at different times, from infancy to age thirteen. The last of the trauma dropped me into a depression so deep that I didn't speak for about six months. I was very lucky it wasn't worse. I know how that sounds. But it's true and learning to find the lucky inside the unbearable is a thread you'll notice runs through my entire life.
The day I called on my Inner Warrior
At thirteen, I ran away. A judge then told me I'd spend the next four years in a youth detention center if I didn't straighten up, and I spent six months on probation alongside girls who'd had it far worse than I had. And something in me decided, during that time: I did not want their road to become my road. And this was the first time I realized that no-one was going to save me. So I stopped expecting anyone to come and save me, and I promised myself that I would save myself.
That was the day I called on my Inner Warrior. She took charge of my life and ran it for the next twenty years. She was fierce, and she kept me alive. What I didn't know yet was that she wasn't the whole of who I was meant to be.
The promise I made in the hardest years
I married the first time at sixteen, mostly to get free, and that marriage lasted 4 months, until he tried to beat me up. Years later, I fell head over heels for a man I loved with my whole heart, my third husband, until grief and addiction turned him into someone dangerous. His drinking caused abuse, and getting myself and my children safely away took two years and the help of a gifted psychic and spiritual adviser, at a time when no shelter, no system, and not even the police could or would help us.
I made a promise in those years: if I ever got free, and if my gifts ever came back, I would do for other people what that woman did for me. I would reach for the information most people can't reach, and work with the energy that changes lives. That promise is the work I do today.
The year it all fell apart financially
And then there was the year everything fell apart financially. I had built a successful real estate career — I was a million-dollar producer with my own real estate school and when the market crashed in 2008, the school went under and left me forty thousand dollars in debt with no income coming in. So I sold flowers in bars at night. I cleaned houses. I did anything legal I could find. One month I only made eight dollars. The next month, six. My car was repossessed. I was 5 months late on rent. My savings were gone.
When my youngest was finally settled in college on a full academic scholarship, I decided to move to Atlanta with forty-six dollars in my pocket and no idea where I would sleep. I figured if I was going to be homeless, I'd rather be homeless somewhere I had a chance. A friend let me sleep in an empty dorm if I'd clean it all. There was no heat, no hot water, and, as it turned out, a few ghosts. I was so grateful for it. Within three months I had a full-time job. Within a few more, I was offered an apartment at a reduced price that was within my budget. I felt so lucky. And within eight months I had paid back every dollar of back rent I owed to the past landlord who was kind enough to not evict us until my youngest started college.
What all of it taught me
Here is what I learned through every bit of it, and it's the heart of everything I teach now.
The way I survived, the way I moved through abuse and poverty and fear and starting over with nothing, was that I could always, eventually, find something to be grateful for. It was never easy, and it usually came after a good long stretch of wallowing. But the moment I found something to be thankful for, I disconnected from the misery, and my whole situation began to shift, sometimes with lightning speed. When I wallowed, nothing changed. When I reached for gratitude, everything did.
I am so grateful for those experiences, because they made me who I am. Not that I'd ever want to do them again!
Coming home to myself
And slowly, my gifts came back, they opened up, the very ones I had buried when I was so young, out of fear. I stopped hiding them. I began speaking my Divine Truth through my own Divine Self-Expression, out loud, in my own voice. For thirty years I had kept myself small and silent to stay safe. The day I stopped was the day I finally came home to myself.
That's what congruence is. It isn't becoming someone new. It's returning to who you always were, underneath everything you did to survive.
Where I am now
Today my life looks nothing like the one I just told you about. I share it with a generous partner who respects my gifts instead of fearing them. I'm a Nana to three magnificent grandbabies. I run my own business, and I spend my days helping women do the very thing I had to fight so hard to do — come home to themselves and take their power back.
So when you ask me how I could possibly understand the exhaustion, the powerlessness, the starting over, the giving yourself away until there's nothing left, now you know.
I've been where you are. I found my way home. And I'm here to help you find yours.