Many years ago, as a newly divorced mother of three small children, I examined of all the relationships in my life on a journey toward healing myself. I was desperate for connection, reassurance, and encouragement. I was also deeply fearful of falling too quickly into friendships that might end up fueling the fires of discontent and doubt that were smoldering in my post-trauma persona. Over the course of several years, I carefully curated my tribe. I learned to identify acquaintances as people who fulfilled the specific role of a fellow PTA mom or a co-worker. I began to carefully discern deeper connections with people who, like me, were focused on authenticity and personal growth. I sought multiple modalities of therapy, legal advice, spiritual guidance, health experts, and many more. I did research to find the best rated professionals to guide me through the scary world of single parenting. I really took to heart the words of motivational speaker Jim Rhon, “We are the average of the five people we spend the most time with.”
While my children and I did improve considerably on the emotional front, there was still a fragment of hurt that we couldn’t seem to overcome. We began to experience emotional fatigue from a sustained period of uncertainty and upheaval. We had a variety of resources and yet we still felt unempowered. Many people are living this way, every day. It is highlighted in the growing conversations surrounding mental health in forums as broad as education, politics, and the entertainment industry. I was experiencing a growing dissatisfaction with the resources and experts available to us. The moment of absolute surrender to the stagnation of our healing came the day my teenage son took his own life.
In that overwhelming abyss of grief, I had this revelation: We spend the most time with ourselves, not a random grouping of five other people. The noise of all those experts and resources tamped down our own intuition. My children and I were being told what to do to feel better in the immediate future. We were not being taught how to listen to our own hearts in order to heal past hurts and choose better for ourselves. There was a disconnection between our physical, spiritual, mental and emotional identities. Each of those elements were addressed independently through different modalities of support but not altogether as a whole. I decided that it was time to dig deeper into this concept of reconnecting with my intuition and integrating healing practices for all the parts of myself. I recognized that my surviving children needed me to blaze this trail so I could light the path to guide their own healing.
It was at this point that I found Zesty Ginger, a dynamic pair of wellness providers with a mission to help women heal in mind, body and spirit. Alex Golden is a functional medical doctor and her partner Megan Blacksmith is a Certified Functional Diagnostic Nutrition practitioner. They teach classes that explain the brain-body connection as it relates to our mental and physical wellbeing. This is accomplished by introducing simple concepts grounded in neuroscience, no-kidding classes on brain chemistry and hormones, as well as practical steps that can be taken to truly change the patterns and rhythms of negative thoughts and behaviors. I enrolled in one of these classes and it truly felt like the missing piece of an unsolvable puzzle had just dropped into my lap. Suddenly, I understood how to actually deploy the resources that my children and I had been digging through for more than a decade. My sense of empowerment returned. I learned to discern the difference between my intuition and the status quo. I uncovered limiting beliefs and began replacing those thoughts with a new narrative in which I became the hero of my life. Megan and Alex provided the groundwork for me to look in the mirror at my messy, beautiful self and straighten my own crown. Once that was accomplished, I was able to put all that learning to good use and coach my children through the residual upheaval of our family’s disintegration and the more recent trauma of their brother’s death.
The Zesty Ginger team is on a mission to educate women and populate the world with an army of like-minded providers who will change the way health and wellness are approached on a global scale. In the midst of my own metamorphosis, I have discovered a calling to be one of those practitioners in the role of a transformation coach. I feel a deep sense of gratitude for this journey and the experiences that have led me to a new purpose that will uplift women and families who have struggled to find that missing piece on the road to healing. It seems like absolute lunacy to consider a major career change with only a decade left in my profession before retirement. And yet, I have never felt more centered and certain of the next steps for my future. I’m enrolled in practitioner’s training this fall with Zesty Ginger to complete certifications in Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP), NLP Coaching, Hypnotherapy, and Quantum Time Technique. I will offer transformation coaching services to private clients who are looking to uplevel any aspect of their lives. Most importantly, I will work with local organizations to bring these tools of understanding and empowerment to women and families who have struggled to find that missing piece which will help them heal from trauma and step into the future with beautiful crowns atop heads held high.