How I Arrived Here

I arrived at this calling by living in the truth instead of believing the lie.

I grew up learning to be the one who held everything together: the caretaker, the scapegoat, the one who made herself small to feel safe. Those early roles shaped a pattern of self-silencing I carried quietly into adulthood, into my faith, and into a 23-year marriage that slowly dismantled my sense of self until I felt like I was disappearing.

Leaving that marriage at 55 cost me everything the world defines as stable. For a season, I didn’t have a home in the traditional sense. It was in that unraveling, in the absolute stripping away of what I thought my life was supposed to look like, that I found something I had never fully had before: myself.

Reclaiming HER Resilience is inspired by Joel 2:25-26. After experiencing so much loss, I clung to the words: “I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten... and you will praise the name of the Lord your God, who has worked wonders for you; never again will my people be shamed.” For me, reclaiming resilience is releasing shame on the journey back to myself, and it’s not a destination I’ve reached but a path I’m still walking. I hold this space not because I have it all figured out but because I know what it’s like to lose myself and find my way back. I’m a little further down the path, turning back to say, “I see you, I know this terrain, and you don’t have to walk it alone.”

From Survivor to Fellow Sojourner

I bring training to this work, but I come to you first as a fellow sojourner, grounded and deeply committed to walking with you as a witness to your story, not an authority over it. Every invitation I extend to you is one I have extended to myself first.

My work is rooted in the Narrative Focused Trauma Care© (NFTC) methodology created by Dr. Dan Allender and The Allender Center. NFTC is a framework that honors the sacred complexity of your story and invites you to engage with it honestly, curiously, and with care. This approach recognizes that your story is not just a sequence of events to be analyzed but a living narrative that carries meaning, wound, and wisdom all at once.

Alongside this, I bring training in Somatic Attachment Coaching and Somatic Parts Work through The Embody Lab. Together, these approaches form an integrated path: one that tends to what the mind knows and what the body holds, so that healing doesn’t happen just in your thinking but in your whole self.

In my personal life, I tend quiet, ordinary rhythms: reading and writing, sharing meaningful time with my two adult children, and cultivating a community that is safe enough. They are the fruit of my unfolding and the cadence that keeps my practice grounded, ethical, and alive.

On Faith and Harm

My faith is a relationship I live, not a religious performance. I have come to know a God who sees me in my wilderness, the way Hagar was seen in hers; a Jesus who holds the fullness of my story, as he held the story of the woman at the well; and a risen Christ who gives voice and purpose to the overlooked, the way the women at the tomb were sent first to carry the greatest news the world had ever heard. That is the Jesus who shapes how I show up.

I’ve learned to trust the quiet, inner knowing that arises when I’m still. I believe God speaks to us through mind, body, and soul, and that the Holy Spirit’s presence in us is never distant. My discernment grows as the Spirit attends to me and I become attuned to the breath of the One who knows us and lives within us.

I also know what it is to experience faith as a cage rather than a refuge, to have spiritual language used to silence you, control you, or bypass real pain. If you are healing from spiritual harm, church wounds, or the slow erosion of a faith that was used against you, I know this path too. This space makes room for your anger, grief, doubt, and questions. I won’t tell you what to believe or where your faith should land; that’s yours to discern. You are welcome here whether you are still in a church or community, lingering at its edges, or have walked away entirely. I believe a faith worth having can bear the weight of it all.

Your story is not a wound to be managed but a truth waiting to be witnessed.