Let's Chat Credentials

I want to be candid with you; I have mixed feelings about providing a list of my education and experiences on my website to "qualify" me in the work I do. Not because it isn't important to be educated and experienced in what you offer. But because there's nuance to when credentials truly "qualify" a practitioner/teacher and when they... don't.

I want to speak to this first. Both as context for what I will share about what has formed me as a coach and educator, and because I believe my position on this alone will begin helping you qualify whether my teaching/coaching style is a fit for you.

A person's education and experience around a topic they choose to lead and guide in is deeply important. But only to the degree that what you learn and experience transforms you and informs your embodiment.

I have worked with Ivy League educated therapists who have a very limited approach to interpreting human behavior and offer harmful labels and diagnoses that came from checking boxes on a paper instead of knowing how to really feel and experience the heart and soul of the human in front of them. I have worked with therapists with "lesser" degrees who see beyond the textbook interpretation of a human mind and support their clients in deep change.

I spent a decade working in different mental health spaces and witnessed a lot of... weird and wonky... things said and done by credentialed professionals. This is a large part of my decision to leave the structures of therapy and mental health law and pursue a career in coaching and education.

I have also been in many education programs where I have watched peers give bare minimum efforts to pass and acquire the paper... without really grasping the depth or breadth of the studies or letting what they learn transform them as a Being.

While I deeply value education, I also take a strong stance that a piece of paper does not and cannot "qualify" a person for a position. Knowing what school a person went to or who taught them only shares one piece of the equation. Deeper context is required to understand the way a person interacted with their education and experience and how fully they comprehend and embody what they learned, versus having a surface level intellectual "box checking" approach to synthesizing what they they were told.

I believe that what is more important than sharing a list of credentials to demonstrate that  I am allowed to do what I do... is sharing my lived experience and devotion to mastery and embodiment of the things I teach and lead in. So I am going to share with you a freestyle riff of my education and experiences and trust that you can feel into my embodiment of this work and choose for your Self whether I am a person you feel called to listen to and learn from.

What has formed me & my work as a Coach, Mentor, Educator, and Being:

I found my way to self help through a court-ordered Alateen (support group for children of a parent in Alcoholics Anonymous) meeting when I was 13. I  spent my teenage years with my nose in books about personal development and psychology and mental health, while living in an emotionally unstable environment and visiting my mother at the different women's shelters and mental health facilities she lived at. I experienced a lot during those years of navigating her mental health and care, studying to try to make sense of it all.

My early years created a passion for supporting mental health. I went to college to be a therapist. I later pivoted my dream and went to law school for mental health advocacy (where I worked in mental institutions, non-profit organizations supporting mental health, in prisons and courtrooms that directly supported mental health issues; where I saw the shadowy underbelly of human suffering and dis-ease), I took courses and certifications of different therapeutic teachings, completed multiple life coaching certifications, a Master Trainer certification in NeuroLinguistic Programming and Hypnotherapy and EFT, a reiki healing certification, two trauma-informed somatic healing trainings +4 years of continuing education, and two breathwork certifications.

I read everything I could about health and healing and the mind-body connection; I was certified in nutrition, a 200 hour yoga teacher training and a 1,000 hour Pilates teacher training. I studied the connection between fascia and emotions, between the physical structure of a body and the belief systems of a mind.

I've worked with and studied under shamans and energy healers, I’ve sat up all night in teepees in the desert with Navajo healers, I’ve sat in plant medicine ceremonies with elders of several lineages, I’ve explored psychedelic healing with therapists.

I've sat in silence for a week. I've attended week-long quantum transformation workshops. I’ve traveled the world to meet gurus and to visit spiritual sites and energetic vortexes. I’ve connected to the akashic records and to past lives. I’ve studied mysticism and magic, Astrology and Human Design. I've connected and channeled and explored realms and dimensions.

I've worked with high level coaches and consultants. I've been in many courses and masterminds. I've attended business retreats, I've read books, I've listened to podcasts.

I've coached hundreds of high-performing and highly successful artists and entrepreneurs and out-of-the-box corporate professionals, learning as much from them as they have from me.

There is little that I haven’t explored in the realms of the human psyche, heArt, soma, spirit, and creative process. And I am still exploring, forever a student, in many ways just beginning. As I enjoy my life, love my husband, raise our 3 babies + dog and cat, play with my friends, adventure the world. A student of Life above all else.

My teachings are not of any one lineage or modality, they are not a regurgitation of another teacher or coach, but rather a consolidation of everything I have lived and learned through two decades of education and experience and devotion to mastery and embodiment in the art of human transformation and creation. My coaching is intuitive-led, while grounded by the range of my education and experience.

My work is all an expression of who I am, of what I embody. It is not theoretical, it is lived wisdom. Which is, in my opinion, the highest standard a coach, educator, creator of any kind can hold for their work and is infinitely more important than what I learned or who I learned it from. So, for now, this is what I will share.