My Personal Story

I frequently get asked, and often reflect, on how I got to where I am. It’s been a ride! Instead of taking you on a roller coaster of words, we’ll go for the interview format.

Have you always been on a health kick?
How did you get started in the health field?
When did coaching come into the picture?
What’s this I hear about being intuitive?
How exactly does your intuition work for you?
So, how did you end up combining it all together?
Anything else I should know about you?

Have you always been on a health kick?
Nope. While many of my childhood memories revolve around food, they certainly wouldn’t be considered the healthy sort. After every holiday, my dad and I would go to Longs Drugs to fill a cart with sale holiday candy – we’re talking Cadbury’s Easter eggs, See’s Valentines boxed chocolates, and pretty much any product involving marshmallows. There was a red tool cabinet, next to the washing machine at the back of the house, which stored all of the goodies.

It wasn’t just about candy. I’ll never forget the 4 for $1 Lucky brand processed meats used for the corned beef with cream sauce on toast (affectionately known as “Shit on a Shingle”). Don’t get me wrong, I ate plenty of healthy food too. Salads and soups and tons of water. My mom was a self-professed health nut, so I got both sides of the coin. More than anything, I remember appreciating food - the tastes, textures, scents, the cooking and sharing of it. I still love food as much as I did growing up, though I know now that health is a much more dynamic process than what’s on your plate.

When I turned 18, I decided to become a vegetarian. This decision took place when I was home on college break, utterly depressed about my dad’s death a few months prior. I went to our favorite place “¼ lb. Giant Burger,” near the corner of Fruitvale Ave. and Macarthur Blvd. in Oakland. I thought I’d sulk away in a strawberry shake, a ¼ pounder, and fries. My tears were distracted by the blood that leaked from my burger when I squeezed it to take a bite. Gross. Sure, I’d grown up on meat. But not bloody meat. That was it for me.

For the next 9 years, I adamantly stayed a vegetarian and began studying other aspects of health, including the people at the forefront, Andrew Weil and Dean Ornish. I saw how stress, communication, career satisfaction, relationships, love, money, and the way you think about things were all important and relevant aspects of health.

How did you get started in the health field?
In a nutshell, I got very sick. I had just graduated from college, and started working in the field I had been educated in – teaching children. It wasn’t what I wanted to be doing. I was depressed and broke out in a very intense skin rash all over my body. It covered me, head to toe – big, red, puffy, painful, and oozing. It was even too uncomfortable to shower. I tried conventional and alternative methods of healing – a dermatologist, RN, naturopath, regular MD, live blood cell analysis.

None of it worked. In fact, the RN/live blood cell analysis lady told me that what I had was worse than cancer and that I should buy $1000 worth of her supplements in addition to doing daily colonics and a juice cleanse. I was so scared out of my mind that I agreed. Within a half-day of those supplements and 2 juices, I ended up in the emergency room with dehydration and hemorrhaging. And get this, the following week when I went back to this lady to return her pills, she accused me of lying to her. She said I made up the illness (uh, hello, do you not see the red rash on my body, yeah, that’s in my head) and I made up the emergency room visit (though I had the paperwork from it). And, I had no witness. Lesson #1 – have a support system with you. Especially, if you think people might go wacko on you.

Obviously, I’m still here, and as you can see from my picture, no rash. What saved me? Homeopathy and a very skilled healer. Within a week of taking homeopathy, my rash began to clear and I’d never felt better. I felt like myself for the first time in years. Homeopathy is all I have used for my health care needs over the past 8 years. It has brought me back into balance from kidney infections, parasites, depression, colds, and more. For more on the highly recommended homeopath, go here.

Having experienced such a powerful healing method, I became more interested in alternative therapies and holistic health in general. The homeopath that I worked with is also the most accurate medical intuitive/psychic I’ve come across. She “read” that I should quit my job, move to Napa Valley, and become a massage therapist. According to her, that would be my entry into the health field. I had a moment of “Is she nuts? I work with kids. Quit my job? Move?” Then I got over myself. I quit my job, moved to Calistoga, and became a massage therapist.

The next few years were spent furthering my studies in health. I added the nutrition component by getting certified as a Diet Counselor through Bauman College (formerly IET). Their focus was on using whole, organic, local, and seasonal food to heal the body. Graduate school was the clear next step for me. After looking at several choices, I knew that the Holistic Health Education program at John F. Kennedy University was the one.

When did coaching come into the picture?
A few months before I started grad school, I went to the campus to finish up some paperwork for the program. I saw a flyer for the new coaching program JFKU was starting. Every question it asked and description it gave fit everything I’d always wanted to do. I was so excited, I could hardly contain myself. I’m not kidding. I had no idea that a Life Coach was actually a profession.

See, when I was a kid, I was fascinated with adults. I wanted to know what they did for a living, were they happy, what would they want to do if they could do anything, and I’d even help them strategize a way to do it. Yes, me, at 8.

I considered being a therapist because I liked to hear life stories, and I felt a strong need to understand why in the world people wouldn’t do what was fulfilling or meaningful for them. This was the closest career I could come up with that fit what I was looking for. That is, until I realized that therapy is about where you are now and looking backwards - repeating stories and hashing out the past. Therapists are a much needed profession, god bless them, I have much respect. Definitely not the career for me though.

Coaching is about where are you now, getting clear on where you want to be, and working together to get you there. It’s about changing how you think, feel, and act so the past doesn’t get automatically and unconsciously repeated. Coaching is a profession and a new way of being, thinking, and doing.

At the time, I had no idea how much freedom coaching was going to give me. Personally, I’ve changed in ways that I had always wanted to but never thought I could. Professionally, it’s enabled me to creatively adapt a career niche where I’ve combined it with my other loves – holistic health and intuition. It has also allowed me to do what is fulfilling and meaningful for me – write, teach, speak, and coach.

What’s this I hear about being an intuitive?
All my life I have been sensitive to energy. You know how it is when you walk into a room and even when nothing is being said, you can feel tension? That’s just one example of being in touch with energy. We all have this ability. For me, it is much more developed. When I was younger, I didn’t know what it was or why it happened. I just knew that some people felt very uncomfortable around me. Others would curiously ask – how did you know that?

Coming out as an intuitive has taken years. It’s really no different than being gifted at a sport or a musical instrument. Except with intuition, some people lump it into the category of “scary things that don’t make sense.” So, let me put it into laymen’s terms: gut feelings, having a hunch, “knowing” the best way to go. 

It has evolved from sensing I didn’t want to be around certain people and frequently feeling drained to now being able to hear and see information that other people don’t. Instead of feeling scared, I now see it as one of my greatest assets. It gives me the ability and insight into why people act the way they do and how they can turn it around.

I’ve worked with mentors since 1998, each with their own unique way of using their intuition. You can learn more about them at their respective sites. Gayle Kimball, prolific author and Professor of Women’s Studies and Sociology at CSU, Chico. Beverly Davies-Mes, massage therapist, Hanna Somatic Educator, Reiki master teacher, and practitioner of energy medicine. Terra Khemiri, healer of 27 years with extensive training and experience in Homeopathy, Pilates, Massage, Nutrition, and Medical Intuition. And for good measure, I must give respect to Susan Browne too, my creative writing teacher in junior college. She was one of  the first strong, funny, present, beautiful, and powerful female role models I had. She taught me to be myself, and that’s enough.

How exactly does your intuition work for you?
Everyone is different, and there are a variety of niches for those that are professional intuitives. My interest is solely in your health and potential. When I work with people, my goal is to see what is standing in their way of being healthy and fulfilled, then discerning how that could be transformed.

My specialty seems to be in relationship dynamics. That sounds like a fancy term, doesn’t it? This may be best explained with a crash course. Here we go.

We all have a lifetime of experience. These experiences show up all around you, like invisible pictures, and change depending the environment you are in. They are based on past experiences, future expectations, beliefs about the way things are, and other people’s energy. When someone is present, and their energy is 100% there or as close that as possible, there are no pictures. That’s when you can more see the beauty of that person.

When I’m in intuitive mode, I can see these experiences/pictures and they look like snapshot images or little rolling movies. While not everybody can see in the same way I do, we can all sense that these “pictures” are there.

Here’s how:
Have you ever felt drawn to someone that you haven’t met? You meet, and you find out you have all these things in common. You both remark, “I can’t believe it! That is so weird to you had that experience too.”

Guess what? Not so weird. It’s a matching picture. That’s right, we are little Pictionary games, drawn and repelled to each other for the very same reasons – our common experiences. Sometimes we get this understanding after one conversation, for others, it can take years to realize that you are both working on the same issue.

Different environments and people trigger different responses or “pictures” in us. When someone comes to me for a reading, they ask me a question, then they show me the answer. I reflect back what I see. I can’t see anything you don’t want to share, aren’t ready to hear, or isn’t pertinent to the question at hand. So, it’s not that I am a mind reader or know the answers to all (wouldn’t want that anyway), but I do have the ability to see what already exists. When I’m given the chance to share that with you, you get the opportunity for clarity, guidance, and healing.

My goal is to not only to shed some light on your own blind spots, but to also help you develop your own intuition. This way you can determine the best choice for yourself at any given moment. Instead of feeling drained and confused, you can feel strong, clear, and grounded. This is what I want for everyone. Can you imagine what it would be like if we came from a place of clarity instead of fear? I can. Wow.

So, how did you end up combining it all together?
When I first began working as an entrepreneur, I boxed my services into separate categories. Some clients came for nutrition. Others came only for intuitive readings. And then there were the coaching clients.

With experience, comes learning. Patterns started to emerge, and I was being shown the same issue over and over. The nutrition clients needed the coaching to help them change their behavior and the intuition to help them make better choices in the moment. The coaching clients weren’t as effective in reaching their goals without taking care of their health and also lacked clarity from the absence of the intuition component. The intuitive clients needed the health portion to more clearly access their intuition and the coaching to more effectively follow it.

I would find myself, frustrated and holding back the other pieces of what I do because that’s not what the clients signed up for. Then I’d add to my irritation by continually debating on how to set myself apart from the crowd as an intuitive, a life coach, and a holistic health educator, separately. That’s when the light bulb appeared, or perhaps it was more like a smack on the head. COMBINE. I could help my clients better, it would set me apart, and it would make me happy. So, combine, I did.

Anything else I should know about you?
Yes. I used to be a professional princess for Magic Princess. I still wear my tiara proudly.