ORIGIN STORY
I didn't lose myself all at once.
THE PATTERN
I didn't always have the language of self-abandonment. That came later. But I was expert at it.
I knew when and where to shrink, contort, juggle, defer. For much of my life, I believed the self was something to be overcome. That my individual expression and being welcomed were mutually exclusive.
I could navigate my world with sharp intellect and kindness. But I learned early not to reveal what I felt or preferred or perceived. I shared analysis instead. It felt safer.
Over time, I lost track of how to distinguish myself from how people saw me.
I spent too much time believing that to be loved, included, safe, or chosen, I needed to soften myself around the needs and expectations of others. I was a master of the "well I don't care THAT much, so I can flex."
I thought I was easygoing and adaptable. Turns out it was much more dangerous than that.
My body declared enough.
THE BREAKING POINT
I was having a recurring dream. I was standing in the street, watching a bus barrel toward me. I knew it was going to hit me. I knew I should move. I didn't.
My therapist asked me when I stopped trusting my instincts.
Around that same time, I experienced an autoimmune shutdown. My very adept immune system was attacking my own systems and cells. I had acute chronic pain and then a full paralysis of my right arm and shoulder.
That same therapist asked me when I became confused about who the enemy was.
I was a young mom who couldn't pick up her daughters. Couldn't reach for plates and glasses. Couldn't slice an apple.
I was terrified. And by now I was paying attention.
Healing didn't mean getting fixed. It meant reconnecting to myself.
THE RETURN
Healing did not mean waiting for my arm to function again. It meant reclaiming my power, agency and acknowledging that I have needs and preferences that matter. Learning that I could take up space without abandoning myself. Discovering that my interests and desires were uniquely my own for good reason.
Healing asked me to change the questions I was asking.
Standing at the center of my own life was never selfishness. It’s an orientation. A way of staying in relationship with myself and remaining available to others. In the right order.
As the shift took hold, my relationships reorganized quietly but unmistakably. I was no longer surrounded by people who drained me or depended on me for stability, direction, or permission. Instead I was met by people who were also in relationship with themselves.
We support one another without collapsing into each other. We meet needs with no need to control. There is care and there is dignity.
This is how I knew I was healing. Not because everything got easy. But because the quality of my relationships, my work, my view changed for the good.
My preferences, instincts, and expression are not indulgent. They are information.
THE DISCOVERY
The work I do now exists because I learned that either-or thinking compromises our access to truth that helps us expand and grow. Healing means reclaiming agency and rejecting the false choice between myself and my belonging.
It’s always both/and.
I learned that it was not helpful to focus on giving advice as the best way to prove my value and worth. Coaching taught me a truth far more enduring: clarity, courage, and peace reside in us all. We lose access to it sometimes, but it is available always.
My work is to help others access what they already carry. To claim it as their own.
Healing didn't mean getting fixed. It meant reconnecting to myself.
THE HEART
I remember a conversation with a woman I'll call Bee. Partway through our call, I felt her tip over and lean on me, energetically. I caught it immediately and asked her if she noticed the shift.
She was handing me authority I didn’t want.
I guided her back over her own center. I told her she could stand on her own and that I was here to stand beside her, not to hold her.
Her voice thick with emotion, Bee told me no one had ever told her that she could stand on her own. She couldn't recall ever having heard it.
We stayed with the emotional wobble and kept on.
This is the heart of my work:
Insourcing power when the world would have us outsource it to prevailing gurus.
To see you stand over your own center and discover that belonging and approval will not require you to shrink yourself is my joy. On the other side of that reclaiming is a different way of relating. One built on interdependence, mutual strength, and a radical amount of self-trust. People won't need you the same way, which is scary at first, but they choose you for far better reasons.
The Insourcing Way
THE PROCESS
The coaching, the facilitation, the podcast, the keynotes — none of it is invented. All of it is lived. I show up entirely myself: perceptive, discerning, unapologetic.
Every tool I bring into a room, every question I ask in a session, every conversation on Crazy Beautiful Truth, the podcast, flows directly from what I learned when my own body said enough. From the years of reclaiming instincts I had been taught to distrust. From discovering that the clarity, courage, and authority we spend our lives searching for, outside of ourselves, were never actually out there anyway. They just need to be allowed. Steadied. Embodied.
My super power is now the steadfastness of my nervous system. I trust myself in every room. That trust been hard won and serves my work in the world.
That is what happens withThe Insourcing Way. And it starts here.