For most of my life, my fears, struggles + conditioned beliefs were running the show. No matter how many books I read or listened to, teachers I sought or healing modalities I tried, nothing seemed to work at the time. I was consistently in a state of survival, frustration and stuckness with no end in sight. As a result, I often felt powerless like I had no choice but to surrender to this fate.

When I was just seventeen years old, I became a mother and not long after that, a single mother. As a young single mother, I faced many painful life experiences, including an abusive relationship with my son’s father + homelessness, which only perpetuated the constant state of survival + hypervigilance my nervous system was already so accustomed to in childhood. Being in this constant state of survival only created more life experiences I did not want to have, rather than the life experiences I could only dream of. With these painful challenges, came a great deal of shame. The funny thing about shame is that it keeps us stuck in feelings of unworthiness, makes us want to hide ourselves from the world, keeps us from the connection we so deeply desire, and holds us back from being our authentic selves.

Though I tried everything to change my circumstances and my own self-perception so deeply rooted in shame, nothing seemed to work. Most of the “self-help” books I was reading at the time by motivational speakers such as Tony Robbins, were leaving out a few very important factors in creating the lasting change that I was seeking. The messaging from these types of books often had a very masculine approach (learn more, do more, be more) with a very Western culture framework: harder, faster, stronger - no pain, no gain, right?

The truth is, in the age of information, if self-evolution was about learning more + doing more, you’d probably be where you wanted to be by now. It wasn't until much later in life, when I came to understand the mechanisms for how I was shaping my life and why, that things began to truly shift for me.