How did I get here...

Did anyone else hear Bette Midler's voice from Beaches "How did I get in here? Aahhh!" 😂

Many of my readers probably know me from my childhood, school years, or from when I finally "grew up" in Los Angeles, and then there are a whole big chunk of you that just met me. So How did I get here?

I suppose I will just start at the beginning, then.

As a child growing up in Utah, I was pretty inventive, and commonly found myself as a leader in my peer groups. Preschool was fun as I would sit around and read to the other kids. Three year olds don't commonly know how to read but it just so happened that my mom taught me the alphabet and I decided that I was going to read, so I did.

Turns out there are quite a few upsides to being able to read. when you're technically not supposed to know how. One of them is that kids who are younger than you think you're cool, even in preschool. Being cool was a plus, but I absolutely loved reading to the kids. They would all sit around the floor by the fireplace, where I sat, and listen as I read whatever books were available in the place. I loved being of service to them and to our beloved preschool teacher Mrs. Harris (no relation, FYI).

As I grew up, I continued to love being of service to others. But because of home circumstances, my little service-oriented soul was depleted of most of the hope that I had inside of me as a young child, and I began to find myself in odd situations that didn't have a good outcome for me. I felt broken and worthless.

I started on a terrifying path of partying and self-destruction which ultimately led me to living on the streets addicted to drugs and hopeless of any relief in this life. I knew I needed help, so when help appeared in the form of a random 1-800 number and a sketchy rehab placement agency (or something of the sort), I clung to it and let it take me to California where I found recovery.

I thought I had found self-love at long last when I arrived there. I finally made decisions that were life-sustaining and positive. This was just the beginning of my self-love journey. Pretty soon, I found myself in one of those situations again, and this time, I was sober. The shame and embarrassment left me desperate to find a solution.

I went to therapy, and moved into a safe place with other people who were on the same recovery path. Things got better. They got so much better, in fact, that I was able to go to school and fall in love with helping people again.

While I found myself busy from morning through the night with school, work, and recovery, I thought I had achieved self-love. The reality was that I was just so busy I didn't have any time to think about myself at all. Which was kind of the point of the schedule, but it was not what I needed. My soul desperately had desired to be an entrepreneur, and with the schedule I was living, and no time to get to know myself again, I couldn't see what I needed.

On a visit to Utah, I decided my nieces and nephews needed me. It wasn't long before I decided to move back to Utah to be with my family.

Because I thought I had achieved self-love, I thought I would come home and I would feel differently in my childhood home than I had all those years prior. I moved in with my parents and soon found myself sleeping the days away until my Pizza Hut delivery job at night, depression had taken over. I didn't feel like a person anymore. I was no longer the person I had come to be in California. I was a broken shell of her.

I decided my parents house was the problem and moved out to live with my sisters. Pretty soon, depression and frustration followed me there.

The end of 2018 I got into the personal development world. I bought Rachel Hollis' book "Girl, Wash Your Face" and then the second one, and was talking about goal setting and motivation and improving myself. I had begun to think about having a business, but didn't put much thought into it at the time. I just kept soaking up their good energy hoping that it would rub off on me.

Then covid hit and I realized I was gay. Rachel and Dave got divorced. My whole world fell apart when the earthquake of the century hit Salt Lake City as I worked from home. Suddenly, I was uncertain. Working from home did a number on me and I wound up needing to take time off from work.

The most amazing thing happened during that time off. I remembered I had desired to have an Etsy shop, so I created one. I remembered that I loved taking photos, so I made it a point to catch as many sunrises as I could. I would wake up as early as I needed to go catch a sunrise. I thought I had achieved self-love once again.

When I went back to work, I was a different person. I had chopped my hair off and dyed it a bright vermilion. I was gay and proud, and I was no longer a pushover. I sat at my desk in that job for months, working on myself when issues came up. I had started a business in finance and was getting licensed and learning all that I could. But every time I came home, I was exhausted.

December of 2021, my life shifted as I was forced to learn how to have healthy boundaries. I began to take accountability for all of my actions at home, and did everything I needed to do in a timely fashion to ensure I was in my room before the rest of the house arrived home from work. I worked on myself, and handled all my feelings on my own. I reminded myself that my feelings were my responsibility, I had learned that somewhere along the way. I quickly decided it would be best to move out. So I planned for it, and inevitably moved out.

I thought once again, I had achieved self-love.

In my apartment, with nobody to blame for anything and a safe space to call my own for the first time, I was so tired. At work, I would clench my jaws all day just from the anxiety because of the work environment I was in. I didn't care as much as I had about the job because now I had learned to care about myself, and my employers didn't like it. It meant that I did things like show up 2 minutes before we unlocked the doors with iced coffee in hand, and pointed out their biased surveys.

I quickly decided I was done. I would work on my business and figure it out. I put in my 3 weeks notice because I couldn't even wait one more week to tell them that I was done. My last day was also the last day of another good team member, and we partied together like family for the last time.

That weekend, I rested for the first time in... ever. It felt like that anyway. I was so gung-ho about my business until I did a couple of appointments that turned out being really bad, and got rejection after rejection. Soon, I realized I would have to go back to work. The thought just crushed me.

There are so many people for which 9-5's are amazing. At the time, I did my best, but the hope that had once pumped through my veins was dry and I felt depressed and hopeless.

My sister bought tickets to an event called the Next Gen Leadership Experience. At that event, the fire lit up in my soul again. I remembered what was important to me. And Coach Travis Brady's loving demeanor healed so much for me during that event. I purchased the package to attend future events and it included a session with the Next Gen team.

At that session, I expressed what my goals were, how I wanted to succeed in my business, and my other goals, but just wasn't. Travis told me my problem was that I lacked accountability and discipline. I asked him one question. How do I build discipline and become consistent?

He said, just do the day to day things. Drink 1/2 your body weight in ounces of water, exercise for 30 minutes... This wasn't anything new. I had heard the same thing for years. But this time, as Travis said it after telling me his 500-foot view of my life, I knew he was right, and I knew that he was telling me not because he felt he could get money from me, or so that I would do what he wanted. But because he cared about me and could see that I was in pain.

After that experience, I immediately started buying coaching programs. Applied for coaching school/certification classes, and got to work. I decided that I was going to learn to love myself and learn to be accountable, and I was going to succeed no matter what. I was going to work on my health, and I was going to create the life I wanted.

Through the masterclass I purchased, I was able to heal the relationship I had with my body. The hatred I had felt for YEARS toward my very own body melted away. I began dropping lbs so fast. I hired this coach again the next month, and kept working on my self, trying to figure out how to love myself. I fully realized that if I was doing things like overeating, sleeping all day, self-sabotaging, and the rest of my destructive behaviors, that I obviously didn't love myself enough.

I read so many books, listened to podcasts, and hired another coach. This coach cost $2500.00. She let me do a payment plan, and after one session with her, the self-worth factor, my value, was determined. It was impossible, after one session, for me to see myself as anything less than valuable. And it was during that first session that I recovered my dream that I had packed away, high up on a shelf in my memory, gathering dust. I have always been a coach, in so many different ways. In my friend groups, in my home, in my family, at school, in preschool. I had always been a coach who wanted to be of service to her clients.

And self-love is my message. This elusive "destination" that is over-talked about and under-understood. Self-love is not a destination. It is an evolution. Self love is a process of uncovering, discovering, and sometimes discarding, sometimes shining up and putting on display.

Self love is a constant evolving of one layer at a time, deeper and deeper, and is one of the most godly attributes. I ask this question all the time, how much do you believe God loves him or her self? Do you think God shames themself and beats themself up in their mind? We are made in the image of God according to many religions, so if God is a person, and has a mind, God must have so much love for themself because its hard to imagine a scenario where the creator doesn't absolutely love themselves.

This is my mission. I want everyone to learn to love themselves on the deepest level, and to discover their dreams again. To believe that they can achieve it, and to march fearlessly toward a new life with confidence and power. My study of self-love for my own journey has made me so passionate about each person finding a deeper level of self love. I want you to have the tools to do that. It took me YEARS of living in discomfort, living out my cycles, and then finally, in 6 months, my ability to love myself grows deeper every day. My goal is to help you do it faster than I had to.

So if you find that y0u're in a place that you love yourself, but there are some behaviors keeping you stuck in a pattern, check out my site and message me if you need a payment program. You are the only one who can decide to take action and learn to love yourself, and I am here to help you do that.

As always, I love you.