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Because I was one.
I grew up the youngest of seven children — felt invisible in a house full of people, carrying a quiet weight I would share with no one. The typical path never quite worked for me either. I tried to fit a mold that was never meant to include me, and for years I believed that meant something terrible about who I was.
By the time I was in my late teens, that weight had become a darkness I didn’t know how to name. I was struggling with depression, trauma, and a level of pain that very few people knew about. I stood at the edge of my own life and made a choice to stay — not because I felt hopeful, but because a five-year-old girl deserved to know she was unconditionally loved, and I was the only one who could show her.
That decision changed everything. Slowly, through gratitude and hard work and more than a few mistakes, I healed. I built a life I loved.
And then, at 32, the ground disappeared.
I woke beside my husband John — and he was gone. A heart attack in his sleep. In an instant, everything I thought I knew about myself dissolved. My identity, my stability, my picture of the future — all of it shattered.
What remained was something truer.
In the wreckage of that loss, I made another choice. I would honor John by living — fully, boldly, without apology. That commitment led me to grieve, to heal, to personal growth, and finally — like a lightning bolt — to the realization that this was my purpose: to be a guide for people walking their own hard roads.
In the wreckage of that loss, I made another choice.
Having never attended college, I decided to pursue a degree at Northwestern University — a dream I didn’t even know to dream. I fell in love with learning. I earned my degree in psychology, became a certified Martha Beck life coach, and then went on to become a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist — not to treat illness, but because I was consumed by one question: why don’t people know this?
That question is still at the center of everything I do.
Today I work with individuals and groups through The Well Lived Life — a framework I developed from decades of lived experience, clinical training, and a deep belief that more is always possible
than you can currently see. I teach people how their brain works. I help them understand their patterns without shame. I guide them through acceptance — not as giving up, but as the only real starting point for change. And then I help them rise into a version of themselves and a life they genuinely want.
This work does not require you to already know yourself. It does not require you to feel ready. It only requires that some part of you suspects there is more — more clarity, more freedom, more life — than what you’ve been living.
Because the thing that has always made you feel different? That was never something to fix. It was always your greatest value.
You don’t need to fit the mold. You need to build a life that fits you.
Welcome to The Well Lived Life.
