How it all began…I call it hitting the “Wall of life”! You know how it is, you look around and everyone’s living the life you want. They have it all, the fun, happiness joy, great body, great relationship, great home, plenty of money, and they make life look so full, easy and happy!!

Life started off for me in Glendale, California. From an early age I had been groomed to be mommy’s little helper. I adored my family and I was eager to help and thrilled with the praise! At twelve years old I was officially running the house, and put on that extra 20 pounds that I would carry thought out my life until I hit rock bottom (more on that later). Mom running out the door to work as I came in from school, (she wouldn’t be home until two am) passing me a list of chores, the menu of what to make for dinner, 4 loads of laundry, finishing cleaning the house, take care of my five year old sister, try and dodge my juvenile delinquent brother and his drugged out friends, have dinner ready when dad gets home and get my sister bathed and put to bed. Needless to say school work was not on the list.

My parents had great aspirations for me: Be a checker at a grocery store or a bank teller. At fourteen my mother found me a job and signed the papers to allow me to work legally. That job was a piece of cake (sorry couldn’t resist pun intended!) compared to what I’d been doing!!

After doing that work I knew I needed an education after high school or I’d be doing that job till I died. So I put myself through nursing school, but nursing was a disappointment – not at all like the soap opera nurses – chatting it up with gorgeous doctors!

I then redirected my career–I pursued an opportunity to work in the wholesale travel industry in Atlanta.   Where I started at the bottom and worked my way quickly to the top. Because I had accomplished so much I wanted to win at that 20 pounds that had dogged me throughout the years. I attended a self-help group for weight loss and within a short time dropped the weight. The “symptoms” of the overweight disappeared and I flung my hair over my shoulders and thought to myself “see ya wouldn’t want to be ya” as I walk out the door. Several years later I convinced the President that it was vital to branch out and I opened the company’s first branch office in New Orleans. That location outsold the home office 5 to 1. After a while I got tired of earning all that money for someone else so I opened my own wholesale travel business. I had every woman’s dream: I was a successful business owner, I had built a name for myself, socially on everyone’s “A” list,   a relationship with Mr. G.Q., and I traveled first class to every dream locale. I was Ms. Gotta get! Gotta be! Gotta do! Gotta have!

But the reality of the dream was this: I had friends but I was alone; I had a boyfriend but not true love; I had a family but I didn’t fit in; I had a Porsche and the “A”-list life but thought “is this it, is this all there is?” My business became my identity, but going to all those fabulous destinations became, well, just ordinary. I wasn’t unhappy or sad. It was much worse –I was indifferent.

Then the inevitable happened. I woke up one fateful morning and faced the reality that no matter how good the image looked on the outside there was nothing on the inside except the pain I had been running from my entire life. Within a few years the original 20 pounds had returned plus a whole lot more…I had dieted my way up to 260 pounds busting out of a size 24! My business crashed and burned along with the New Orleans oil markets. Of course, my relationship melted away like butter on a hot stove. I was broke and alone with myself for the first time. I wasn’t even 30 years old and I was done, finished.

I could only cry and try to coat the nerves with pizza and ice cream for so long. I had always been a “doer” so I got busy again. I had always been a problem solver in life. I was now going to be a problem solver in My life. So I did what all problem solvers do: I asked myself the big “WHY?” Why do I have these problems? Why was I fat, why did I have such distain for myself, why did I achieve and not feel worth anything, why was it never enough, why was I was never enough?

So I sought therapy and continued to ask “Why was I so fat?” They said, “When we figure out what was eating you, you’ll just drop the weight.” So, of course I kept going to therapy, then I went to find religion, spirituality, God. I went to my past, my childhood. I asked “why, why why,” until I realized that I was in an endless debilitating loop of staying in the problem. People told me lots of reasons ‘why’, but nothing changed. All that time, energy and money and I still had the same head with all the same problems. I cried and I cried until I finally let go of the Big WHY. But I was still fat, still without my true love, still on the treadmill of an unsatisfied life.

So, I got busy again. But this time I was not going to try to figure out the problems. I knew I had problems, I even knew why!   But I yearned to think and feel different. I got behind the old saying, “If you want what they have, DO what they do!”

In my old thinking I was worse than a loser, I was average, and I had hit my own glass ceiling. My old head accepted the rich and the poor, the winner and the loser, but the average??? It made it seem like I didn’t even try, and I was working and pushing as hard as I could. I believe; The mind that got you into trouble can’t be the one to get you out! So my tools for living had worked to a point and then all but turned on me, like a machete and cut me to shreds! As a 20-pound-er I was once a 5-pound-er… as a 100-pound-er I was once a 20-pound-er…as a relapse-r I was once a 5-pounder… As I stated earlier I had attended a self-help group for weight loss with only 20 pounds to lose…I had laced my life with this group for 11 years dieting my way to be 100 pounds overweight I was like many others I thought I had a cold and when the symptoms of overweight disappeared I was “recovered’. I had wasted 11 years of my life. I needed a new set of tools for the rest of the journey.

I came back to California and faced the truth for the first time. I could never forget this fact. It came down to a simple idea: it didn’t matter what I thought, it didn’t matter how I felt, it only mattered what I did. So I began to rebuild my life from the inside out. What did I really want? What was my truth? I started looking at who I wanted to be. I let go of “Ms. Gotta get! Gotta be! Gotta do! Gotta have!” and all the shoulds, musts and demands. I wanted to be at peace with myself and others and feel comfortable in the world and in my body.  

I took the weight off. I was committed to keep looking inside of me and creating my life from what I wanted and kept moving in that direction. It’s been years of growth, self-examination, forgiving others and most important accepting myself. I’ve had to develop that part of me that never had a chance to grow; the fractured self where my addiction grew up and out of.

Through years of discipline, devotion and determination I have built my life and my coaching practice. I have maintained a healthy body weight since 1989. I met my true love and have been joyously married since 1994. It is a perpetual love that continues to deepen, give and grow. I now have the life I’ve always wanted. I have a beautiful life, I live loved, and I’m living my passion taking people from wanting to doing.

My greatest joy is seeing others discover their true selves and answer the yearnings of their hearts. It is tremendously fulfilling to see them claim their joy, peace, prosperity, love and happiness.

People tell me they want what I have. So I say “if you want what I have, do what I did!”

Let’s get to work!

Your Coach,