This time of year, the beaches are quiet with mostly locals walking alongside the breaks or enjoying sunset. It’s easy to spot the vacationers, bogged down and still attached to that world of overwhelm. A family of five, husband dragging the entirety of their beach necessities – umbrella, chairs, towels, boards, beach bag, toys and plenty more – lags far behind the rest. The children, all boys, have already made their way into the water as their mother calls for their extraction, they haven’t’ got their sunscreen yet. She hurriedly sprays each one and off they go. 

As her husband approaches with the impossibly manageable cargo, she takes a chair from his hand without even a thank you. She sunscreens herself, asking for his help with her back – again, without a thank you – and disappears behind the screen of a phone, oblivious to her husband, her children and to the beauty of what surrounds her. He tiredly unloads and makes his way with a football to play with the kids. They play for ten minutes or so, as laughter couples beautifully with the sound of crashing waves. Mother never looks up. After what I imagine to be as much energy as he could muster, dad retires to the sand without so much as a towel beneath him and falls asleep. The children make their memories and I begin to ponder.

I imagine how tired these parents must be. Tired from the long road they traveled from wherever they came from to be here. Tired from whatever jobs they have back home. Tired from raising three young boys. Tired from the housekeeping and yardkeeping and everything else. I relate to this. Every parent does. We juggle so much, stretch ourselves far too thin, survive on coffee and spend most days feeling like it’s never enough. 

But here, on this island, is respite from all the ways of the world. Here and now is an opportunity, however brief, to be present and to merely enjoy the people we are privileged enough to call family. If we cannot access it here, what hope do we have of ever really living life? We can though, if we pause and choose it.

This woman I watch could have recognized that her husband was just as tired and helped him carry the load down to the water, or at least acknowledged him for his strength and dedication to his family. Perhaps if she did, he would offer her some praise or moment of emotional connection, something she’s been desperately trying to substitute with social media scrolling. Perhaps if they showed one another love, affection, gratitude – they may enjoy this time away from the life that’s left them empty and resentful and return with a renewed sense of wonder. Instead, they remain quiet and distant, as if they are alone on two different islands.

I say a silent prayer, hoping that they find the rest and the joy and the treasure in their time here and that they find a way to take a bit of that back to wherever home is. I remind myself how important it is to take time to fill my own cup, to be present with my child and not miss the fleeting moments of his laughter, and to cherish my husband for all that he does for our family.

I was a young woman, naive in so many ways, and a virgin to the incessant demands and relentless uncertainty of adulthood. In the years that followed, I attended college. I got married. I became a mother. I developed a chronic illness. I became an entrepreneur. My marriage failed. My body failed. My business failed. I was lost. But, throughout the twists and turns of the path I was on, I found a way to navigate and strategize and, most importantly, envision a better future.

I shared my journey and surprisingly, people found inspiration and hope in that. People began reaching out to me, not only to offer encouragement or thank me for sharing my most vulnerable moments and the way I forged through them, but also to share their own personal experiences and struggles. People came to me to find strength, insight, help. It became my privilege and purpose to give it, and to share in their pain as well as in their hope.  Helping others sort through their circumstance, find direction and courage and create a clear path toward their own happiness became a personal mission.

I was working on other projects and building businesses, but all the while, I was distracted by the influx of people seeking the same thing I was working toward in my own life, happiness. Only I realized that it wasn’t a distraction at all. It was more of a calling, something that had become my passion and purpose. After quite a bit of discernment, introspection and the help of some powerful seminars and life coaching of my own, I decided that this is where my focus should be.

I am, by my very nature, a coach. A cheerleader, a helper, an encourager and a problem solver. It is within me the desire and the need to help people move past their fears and circumstances into the life they are capable and worthy of. That has become my mission.

As a life coach, I can help you identify your goals and the things that are holding you back from achieving them. I can help you sort through the uncertainty and make decisions confidently. I can help you find possibility in all the areas of your life where you want to create change. Together, we can create a vision for your ideal future and empower you to get you there.

I have prayed countless prayers about how to regain my hope, my spirit, my passion and, on a deeper level, my relationships and reputation for being a cultivator of change. I’m at a loss. While I have taken the necessary time and energy to pick up the scattered pieces of my personal life and place them, as best I could, back together ~perhaps with a little duck tape and more than a little wine~ my business and public life remain fractured. And I need to address it. There are far more people than I have the ability to explain or apologize to individually, my hope is that this space can become my haven for recompense, for renewal, and for rebirth.

Seven  years ago, my world was turned upside down when I suddenly and unexpectedly became very sick. I suppose that sort of thing is never expected and always sudden. Everything I had worked so diligently for, everything that I was, was taken away from me, piece by piece. I was powerless to do anything more than watch, like the passerby of a horrible traffic accident. It felt surreal. But it was also survival, in its rawest form.

I managed to claw my way out of it, to some extent, for a short period of time. I was over-medicated and undermined, but life went on to a manageable degree. And I became a mother. A prodigious blessing, however unexpected. A life changing event, gift, experience, purpose. But motherhood inflamed, quite literally, my body’s inability to function properly and despite the arsenal of prescription “management”, I quickly became very sick, once again.

I learned a very difficult lesson throughout this season of my life. Well, maybe a few lessons. But the one that has been ingrained most deeply is the dichotomy of being labeled with a chronic illness and not having that label. At the times when I became critically ill, I was still living life without an official diagnosis. And that state of limbo was an arduous place to exist.  It was easy for the people around me to dismiss what was happening to me, to make light of it. From an outside view, I didn’t look sick. I appeared normal, healthy. Only my husband, who shared that formidable space behind the walls of our home, understood how sick I truly was becoming. Without a diagnosis, without a label, most of the people around me simply thought I was being overly reactionary. It was very isolating, and after a time, I grew weary of trying to explain my blank stares, sudden departures and excessive absences. It was just easier to survive within my own hell than to attempt to bring anyone else into it.

For several years, I struggled to be a wife, to be a mother, to get out of bed. But I found saving grace in building a business that allowed me to help other people live healthier lives. I became so fiercely passionate about it, that in some ways, I neglected an already crippled marriage I barely noticed was on the verge of collapse. Until it did.  And once again, my world shifted violently into someplace unfamiliar and unclear. For several months, I tried to maintain the charade of being a professional cultivator of inspiration. But behind the screen of Facebook and Instagram, I was acutely struggling to find my own. And so I made the decision to come clean.

I don’t regret that choice. I am, and always have been, an open book. I believe in being who I am, unapolagetically. But the decision did not come without recourse. During the most intense period of tribulation of my life, I was harshly criticized, judged, insulted. Because of that, I began to withdraw from my business, from social media and even from my personal relationships. I was terrified of the vengeful disapproval. And it was everywhere, about everything that was my life, or what people perceived my life to be.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve been the charmed recipient of far more love and support than the latter. And I am so grateful for that. It’s been my anchor. Despite my eternal optimism, I’ve somehow allowed myself to become a victim of the hearsay and judgment. I’ve let it change me, and rob me of the things I worked so hard to reclaim. My health, my relationships, my passion, my vision. But, as we all know, life goes on. We cannot live safely in the past, but rather, we must step through fear into a hopeful future. From this moment, I am leaving the past where it belongs, I’m closing the door on my failures and walking forward in faith. Because there is no other choice. I refuse to throw in the towel.

And so I write this as a letter of apology, as a declaration of betterment, as an oath of restoration.

Life goes on, and we are all the better for that.

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