Part 3: Living My Purpose

After recovering from the shock and collateral damage of leaving a toxic relationship, I got back on my feet and was soon ready to climb my next mountain. I left an 18-year-long career as a bartender. I started working for myself, teaching self-defense classes, empowerment workshops, and martial skill-based fitness classes. While this new professional direction was rewarding in many ways, an ember was growing inside me. A tiny flicker inside telling me there was more I needed to learn, more I needed to achieve, grew into something I could no longer ignore.

I woke suddenly one morning, earlier than my norm. I found myself on my laptop completing the registration process for the local community college. High school was more than a decade behind me, and I never fully applied myself. I did the bare minimum required to graduate and left my academic education in the dust. Yet here I was in my 30s, taking an entrance exam for placement, wondering just how remedial the courses I would be required to take would be.

It was a whole different ballgame doing schooling for myself this time. It felt amazing to be on campus and so rewarding to be pursuing my own personal growth. I sat in the front row wholeheartedly engaging in the content being delivered.

As I neared completion of my associate degree in health and wellness coaching, I was already wanting more. The ember had grown into a flame. Yet, attending a major university seemed out of the scope of possibility. In part due to the fact that I was nearing the delivery of my 3rd child, just weeks after completing my associates degree and on top of that there were no undergraduate psychology programs in my area that met my interests.

By chance or fate, a series of events occurred, I was suddenly able to move with my family; my supportive partner, mother, two teens, four cats, 40 house plants, and a two-week-old baby to Boulder, Colorado, and begin the next phase of academic journey at Naropa University studying contemplative psychology, with my concentration focus on somatic psychology.

Each course I completed further indicated I was on the right path and my understanding of how powerful and essential the mind-body connection grew. I was in awe of the journey, and my passion for embodiment as a pathway for empowerment was solidified.

I completed my undergraduate degree with little fanfare during the height of the Covid pandemic, another unexpected twist which opened the opportunity to return to our home state of Oregon. There was no in-person ceremony due to everything being on lock down, just a brief video presentation. It was wild how underwhelming the culmination of this major achievement was. I was the first in my family to get a bachelor’s degree, and then it was just another not-so-normal pandemic Saturday.

Shortly after graduation, I began to facilitate intimate partner violence intervention groups. I worked with perpetrators of interpersonal violence, helping them learn interpersonal skills to break the cycles of harm in their relationships. Using self-awareness principles found in embodiment practices, I was able to help clients access new perspectives and gain skills they wished they had been taught years earlier.

This work helped me realize how reactive behavior patterns are common even in seemingly "normal" relationships. I saw how many unhealthy behavior patterns have become normalized despite hindering healthy, lasting interpersonal connections. I saw a new connection between embodied self-awareness and harm reduction.

Of course, this new understanding led me to realize I still had more to learn, and my academic journey entered into the advance arene as I completed my master's in human development at Fielding Graduate University. Now as I write this, I am working part-time as a mental health therapist at a local nonprofit clinic, while also pursuing my Ph.D. in human development. I am nearing completing my dissertation, which explores embodiment as the gateway for realizing one's innate personal power, maximizing healthy relationships, and accessing human potential.

I am excitedly awaiting what is next on my journey. I know the possibilities are limitless.