THE ABRIDGED VERSION OF
MY STORY
Heart-on-fire creative
Wife, mom, & coach.
I grew up west of Sydney, Australia, in a town called Penrith with a good old clothes line* out the back. I was a sensitive kid, introverted and creative, full of daydreams and imagination.
Throughout high school, I discovered a love for graphic design. I went on to earn a degree in Visual Communications, and for many years I worked in the print and digital space. Eventually, I launched out on my own as a sole trader*, specializing in branding and websites.
By this time, I was married to Chad and pregnant with our daughter, Emera. I thrived in my business and loved my work, yet something about what I was doing didn’t fully align with my heart. The projects that lit me up most were for other creatives with a vision to inspire, connect, and genuinely serve their clients.
As I explored this, I realized it wasn’t enough for me to simply facilitate that vision. I wanted to cultivate and embody something similar for myself. This longing wasn’t new; it had been with me since I was a little girl. What I wasn’t yet aware of, though, was even in my passion and drive, I was profoundly un-resourced… and it was beginning to take a toll.
In the wake of giving birth to my son, Jace, three and a half years later, I began to buckle under my own expectations. After much deliberation I decided to lay down the tools, right before we moved to America, hoping for a fresh start.
Instead, as our feet hit the ground in California, I felt less sure of my next adventure. The emptiness that followed was daunting and deeply confronting. Sitting still, doing nothing, felt unfamiliar and unsettling. Staying busy had been my way to cope, an attempt to validate my worth, significance, and purpose.
My niece had passed away just before our move. She was six years old. Her death cracked something open in me that I could not close again. What I thought was grief for her began to feel like something much larger, something I had been outrunning for most of my life.
As this forced rest unfolded I began to grieve, what felt like the weight of an ocean.
This went on for years. My marriage and my children continued to feel the impact of the inner turmoil I couldn’t seem to passify. Things grew dark. The more I tried to fix myself, the heavier everything became. Every attempt to hide behind a new venture, a new focus, crumbled in my hands.
I could feel myself spiraling, and what once felt like a rollercoaster became an island of mazes, tunnels, knotted jungle paths and dead ends. Shame took root, and I felt so lost.
As I tried to map my way through this unfamiliar territory of rest, I was faced with some very familiar themes. Echoes from my childhood called out. Unresolved traumas and old anxieties unearthed. A mountain of dismissed feelings begged to be felt, and a sadness I had tried to avoid took over.
I began to see how much of my striving had been a way to escape an inner world that felt too heavy to face… and how deeply I had absorbed the belief, in subtle and not so subtle ways, that I needed to prove my goodness, my worth, my belonging.
Stillness felt dangerous. Silence felt exposing.
This moment felt like a culmination of so many layers.
My yearning for healing, peace, and wholeness was more than I could bear. The little girl in me was reaching out for closure, while I was learning, slowly, how to reach back toward her.
In the pain we both ached for meaning.
What I couldn’t see then was that this very path (the one I was resisting) would become the heart-aligned adventure I am now living. The place where purpose would begin to emerge not despite the pain, but through it.
A heat-aligned adventure.
To call my own.
Over the following years, I began noticing the ways I would abandon myself, and practiced staying. I reached the end of old strategies and surrendered in ways I didn’t know were possible. Slowly, something in me began to reorganize from the inside out.
I explored many therapies and approaches, read countless books, and integrated a wide range of tools. Yet perhaps the most significant work was unlearning the paradigms I had relied on for years… methods that emphasized fixing, pushing, and overriding instead of safety, presence, and connection.
Through this process, something unique began to form. I learned how to build internal resources, expand my capacity for intimacy, and stay present with myself and others, even when it felt uncomfortable or foreign. For me, this became the ground from which love, regulation, and honest connection could grow.
It was the hardest, and most important work I have ever done.
Today, I write this feeling deeply resourced and more at rest than I once believed was possible, with the same heart-on-fire I carried when I first began as a designer. The difference now is that I feel securely aligned. This work of connection and coaching feels close to my heartbeat.
The journey here was turbulent, and while I would never romanticize the pain, I am grateful for what it revealed. What began as unraveling has become something I hold with tenderness, my thumbprint on the world.
I don’t share this story lightly. It feels tender to express what is behind the smiling photos and curated words. I do it because I truly believe vulnerability leads the way.
And I want to name something important: this story is simply the soil this work grew from. Your soil will be different. Your seasons will be different. The work we do together is not about becoming more like me, it’s about becoming more deeply you. Not following my path, but discovering your own capacity to stay present, build safety within, and cultivate connection that allows you to truly thrive.
If I am to call myself a coach, I want you to know that I don’t position myself as the expert of your life. You are. I don’t teach primarily from theories or polished knowledge. The book I teach from is worn and weathered, its margins inked with notes, its words etched into the pages like trenches carved through unforgiving dirt; lived experience and embodied learning. My role is simply to walk alongside you as you build the internal resources to stay and expand.
I am so grateful you are here. I hope you stay for a while.
*Clothes line: Aka the Hills Hoist, an Aussie icon you’ll find in almost every backyard in Australia. It is a height-adjustable rotating clothes line for drying clothes in the sun and wind.
*Sole trader: A self-employed person who owns and runs their own business as an individual.