I’m a home school mom to 2 incredible humans that inspire me daily to do my personal healing work. I was born & raised in Ontario, Canada but came to the USA at 18 and I’m still here, currently residing in the beautiful northeast Tennessee.

When I was about 5 years old, we became a strict independent Seventh Day Adventist (SDA) home. Homechurching was our norm, punctuated by monthly gatherings my mom helped organize for the disgruntled Adventists in our area. We “held the standard of truth” high – essentially clinging to the fundamental beliefs of the SDA Church, but decrying the apostacy that was “apparent” in the church – thus the absence from actually attending church. Some of my religious memories include strict adherence to a completely vegan diet (minus honey), dress reform (long, baggy skirts, loose clothing, no shorts for guys, swimming in skirts), morning and evening family worship with singing hymns and studying the Bible & the writings of our prophet Ellen G White, a focus on character development (Bill Gothard, anyone?) and perfection, overhearing dramatic conversations about impending end-time events, how we would or would not survive them, the ways we’d be tortured, the inevitability of having to choose between the ones we love and being faithful to God.

After several years of home churching and then visiting an SDA church made up mostly of the older population (and therefore “less apostate”) my family was introduced to the Seventh-Day Adventist Reform Movement – an entirely separate denomination from the SDA church. We joined the church and, always “holier” than the people even in this new church, I grew up with an intense sense of isolation and peculiarity; as well as a deep religious “fervor.” Car rides home from church often included discussions where we mourned the high heels, the slits in the skirts, the oil & refined flour used in their cooking, the fact that some of them watched movies and, *gasp* some of the girls even wore pants during the week. Terrible, terrible sins.

Consistent with my religious fervor I attended 2 years of Bible college (which included lots of door to door work called “colporteuring” or “canvassing”) & then taught and attended 2 years at a missionary school. A couple years after launching into ministry, a couple months into a brand new church plant project with my best friend, I had to quit and moved back home to Canada for a time – my health had broken and the undiagnosed depression and anxiety had gotten the best of me. I just couldn’t physically cope anymore.

About 18 months later, after a doctor told me that the stress was killing me and I needed to do something about it, I removed my membership from the church to give myself “time and space to heal” – not because my beliefs had changed in any way, with no intention of staying away. It would be about 8 years of struggling later that I even discovered that Religious Trauma was a thing and that there were reasons I felt soooooo STUCK.

After thousands of dollars on therapy and coaching programs, I began to work on myself with a counselor who understood religious trauma. Things started to shift for me at an actual root level this time. This wasn’t temporary like the other things I had done to heal. I began to feel unstuck. I began to feel ALIVE. I began to feel serenity. I began to trust myself. It was incredible. And I knew that I had to learn these skills so I could help others in the way I was helped.

I am a Certified Trauma Recovery Coach, Safe & Sound Protocol (SSP) Provider, and Resilience Toolkit Certified Facilitator (Therapeutic Tremoring & other body-based mindfulness and movement tools). My goal with my clients is to hold a space of safety and facilitate healing on the level of the body – where the trauma is stored and did the damage. Cuz that’s where the magic happens.