In 2019, I left an abusive marriage where love meant walking on eggshells and my safety depended on managing someone else's emotions. I spent a months doing the work - learning how not to be the 'crazy girlfriend,' how not to chase people away. But the hardest part wasn't learning to attract love. It was learning to stay once I found someone who actually chose me.

In 2020, I met my now-husband. He didn't need me to fix him. Our relationship wasn't the toxic intensity I was used to. It felt boring. But I was so addicted to chaos that healthy love felt foreign. I'd search for problems to solve - picking fights over dishes, analyzing his tone when he said 'good morning,' creating drama where none existed. I'd study his texts for hidden meaning, replay conversations looking for signs he was losing interest, manufacture emotional intensity because calm felt like indifference.

On our first vacation together in Mexico, we had this romantic dinner and afterward he said he wanted some alone time. I was devastated. Why would he want space if he loved me? I posted in a Facebook group for divorcees that I was on vacation with a boring person. Everyone agreed - this would never work.

The next day, he told me he wanted to marry me.

He hadn't been pulling away - he'd been processing what he was feeling. Taking space to actually feel it. But I took it personally because I couldn't make sense of love that didn't require me to earn it every single day.

Learning to exist in a relationship where 'too much' was exactly right became the hardest and most healing work of my life.

That awakening bled into everything. In 2021, I started my business and discovered the same patterns showing up there too. I'd undercharge clients because asking for real money felt 'greedy.' Say 'I'm fine' while my stomach was in knots. I was successful at everything except feeling wanted.

Now I help women break the same patterns that almost broke me. I hold a Master's in Clinical Mental Health Counseling and work through intensive coaching, raw storytelling, retreats, and virtual events where we practice choosing ourselves in real time.

This work isn't just what I do. It's who I became when I stopped asking for permission to want what I wanted.