MY STORY
I was born under a Scorpio Sun on November 20, 1982, and was raised on the westside of Cincinnati, where I grew up as an athlete, a high achiever, and the daughter of parents deeply involved in our community through local sporting organizations and affiliations. While my childhood appeared “normal” from the outside, underneath the surface my family carried unspoken generational pain and unresolved wounds that shaped much of my early environment and experiences. I learned to navigate complex dynamics, unaddressed trauma, and patterns that weren’t always healthy, all of which I absorbed energetically long before I understood them.
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By the time I reached my teenage years, everything intensified as my family life unraveled. My older brother and only sibling struggled with addiction, ultimately entered the prison system at age 18, and my parents divorced shortly after. That season of instability threw me into my own cycle of rebellion and set the stage for years of stress, survival mode, and my own unhealthy coping mechanisms that followed me into adulthood.
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Despite the chaos around me, I continued to excel outwardly. I launched my career early, stepping into government work at our local county courthouse after graduating high school six months early, and went on to put myself through college during that time. It became a place where I met many of the mentors and supporters who carried me through some of the most difficult years of my journey. From there, I moved on to corporate and private business environments where I continued to make advancements and build a strong foundation for myself.
Through it all, I was still carrying the emotional weight of addiction, grief, and trauma within my family, and these years were riddled with many highs and lows. My brother’s passing from a heroin overdose in 2008 was a devastating turning point. A year later, I became the guardian of his three-year-old son, who I raised through adulthood. He is now 19 years old.
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Life continued to bring both beauty and hardship over the years. In 2015, I met my husband, my soulmate, shortly after he had walked through his own recovery journey from alcoholism. We blended our families and co-parented our children together, building a home rooted in honesty and healing. After years of longing for the motherhood experience in its entirety, I became pregnant in 2019, only to lose my father suddenly one month later. My son was born that fall and soon after required open-heart surgery, which led me to walk away from my corporate career due to panic, fear, and the overwhelming uncertainty of the situation. During his hospitalization, my mother was diagnosed with lung cancer, and I became her full-time caregiver until she passed in late 2020.
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By that time, I had spent decades in survival mode. I was functioning, performing, giving, and holding everything together while silently collapsing inside. It wasn’t until I reached a point of emotional exhaustion while caring for my mother that I finally reached out for support. I began talk therapy, continued sessions with a spiritual coach and Reiki master that I had crossed paths with a few years earlier, and committed to a deep, intentional healing journey.​
As I peeled back the layers of childhood trauma, grief, and long-held patterns, something in me awakened on a profound level. I began unlearning the beliefs and survival strategies that once kept me safe, reconnecting to a deep intuition I had spent years quieting through unhealthy coping mechanisms. As I healed, those old habits naturally fell away, and I no longer felt the need to numb my pain or alter my consciousness just to get through life.
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​My husband began his own inner work as well, realizing that sobriety from alcohol was only one piece of his healing. Together, we continue to transform our relationship, our home, and our lives with greater harmony, awareness, and connection.
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By 2022, I had released the unhealthy coping mechanisms I once leaned on, rebuilt my physical wellness, and found a new sense of clarity and alignment. I returned briefly to my corporate career, but it was there, right in the middle of an ordinary workday, that I experienced an undeniable knowing that I was meant to use my story, my healing, and my gifts to support others. My path was shifting from surviving life to helping others learn how to truly live it.
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That moment led me to create Heart Centered Healing & Wellness. Today, through Reiki, intuitive guidance, sound healing, meditation, and heart-centered work, I help others reconnect to themselves, reclaim their power, and experience the kind of healing that changed my own life. Every part of my story has prepared me for this purpose, and now, I’m exactly where I’m meant to be.
