My Origin Story
I'm not sure if I'm jumping the gun, but I thought I'd do this assignment. Let me know if it is too long.
I’ve always been a champion of people. I was the kid who befriended the girl in kindergarten when others made fun of her. I was the one who boycotted my third-grade class when a teacher was cruel to a student. I fell in love with the hippie movement—despite being born eighteen years too late—and carried its values of justice, compassion, and collective care with me wherever I went.
That same longing for freedom and authenticity led me to study Romantic literature in college, a movement devoted to living passionately, truthfully, and in relationship with the inner world. Those ideals weren’t academic to me—I wanted to live them.
That devotion became a throughline. I joined VISTA to support underserved youth, spent years working with children, and later chose massage therapy to help people care for themselves more fully so they could care for others more sustainably. I’ve always believed everyone deserves to be seen, heard, and recognized.
It just took me longer to demand that same consideration for myself.
I was raised in a culture shaped by hierarchy—where someone else’s voice always mattered more. The conditioning was subtle and constant, and while I was independent by nature, a quiet part of me absorbed the belief that I had to earn my worth in order to be loved.
That belief followed me into the relationship that woke me up.
I thought I’d found the love of my life. I was instantly drawn to him, and when we met, I heard a quiet inner whisper telling me I would marry him. On the surface, he was my kind of person. Beneath it, he believed I was beneath him—and, painfully, a silent part of me believed it too.
He was critical of me, but he was even more critical of himself. He feared closeness, carried deep insecurity in relationships and work, and those fears often surfaced as criticism. Because I had learned to shapeshift for approval, I turned myself inside out trying to love him enough to make him feel whole.
He didn’t love himself. And I didn’t love myself either—not in the way required for a healthy, mutual relationship. I loved him deeply, but I hadn’t yet learned how to anchor myself in self-respect.
When our marriage began to unravel, he insisted to our couples counselor that I be medicated, framing my expressed emotions as instability. The day he demanded an intervention was the day everything changed.
I realized there was nothing I could do—and nothing I wanted to do—to convince him that I mattered. I chose to value myself more than the relationship. I left. And I began to heal.
I committed to showing up for myself the way I had always shown up for others. Along the way, I learned that talk therapy alone could only take me so far. It was through the body—through touch, breath, and movement—that I truly came home to myself. That path led me to certifications in Transformational Breathwork and Soul Motion, study with spiritual teachers, and eventually to Wilderness Walk Shadow Coaching, where I finally understood that I wasn’t broken.
I learned to meet my uncomfortable parts with curiosity instead of judgment and to trust that the qualities that make me who I am—my depth, compassion, curiosity, and comfort with the unseen—are gifts.
I’ve come full circle. The Romantic ideals that once stirred me—living freely, authentically, and passionately—are now something I practice, imperfectly and wholeheartedly, every day.
I’m not fixed. I’m a beautiful work in progress. The goal isn’t perfection—it’s presence. No mud, no lotus. Roses have thorns. Who we are, in all our perfect imperfection, is enough.
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My Origin Story
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