ME
NU

michelle's story

About

“I feel the best way to honor someone’s life is to fully live your own.”

After losing my brother to cancer in 2009, I needed a change. I decided at that moment that I couldn't keep living the way I had been, unhappy, manipulative, self-destructive, overweight and toxic. 

I remember being interviewed by a local tv station, shortly after my brother had passed, he had gained local media attention in the fight against the insurance company, and they were checking in on us.

I stood there on camera and said 15 words that would forever change my life,

In May of 2009, I set out on a quest to discover my own life of freedom. I began to reinvent myself one day at a time.

However, with all things in life, it was a challenge. Releasing the old patterns and layers from my youth were difficult and even though from the outside I was making great strides, on the inside I was still struggling.

Struggling with grief.

Struggling to accept and love myself.

Struggling to identify my true purpose.

Along the way, I found love in a very unexpected place. Quickly I realized my soulmate in life was my brother’s childhood best friend. Beginning this new adventure allowed me to start a new exciting chapter with someone in my corner.

Slowly I chipped away at the old pain and grief and began to live my life according to one question...

"Does this make me happy?"

I went back to school for Public Relations and Communications, graduating with honors from Loyola University Chicago.

I worked in various fields within the nonprofit sector (while also waiting tables, because student loans are expensive), until landing an unexpected dream job with a large nonprofit in St. Louis, MO.

I served almost three years as the Advocacy Coordinator, and later Communications Manager and I fell in love with mission-driven work, helping people share their stories and discovering new and exciting ways to market businesses.

I was the “happiest” I'd been in years, and then everything changed...for the better.

In December 2015, my son was born and I experienced my own personal rebirth.

All the work I'd done leading up to this couldn’t prepare me for the transformation that I was about to experience over the next three years.

After my son was born I struggled with a very intense postpartum period. I was in no way prepared for this chapter of my life and I felt incredibly lost.

Even though I had an amazing family of support, a partner who I openly communicated with and a group of friends, I still struggled to look in the mirror every single day.

At the time, I didn’t recognize what was happening and to the outside world I appeared to just be an exhausted new mother, but on the inside I knew something was wrong.

I was caught in an in between.

In between and clinging on to who I once was and confused, but excited about who I could be.

I ultimately had a choice in front of me, the same choice I experienced just six years ago after the loss of my brother.

I chose to expand, to grow and step fully into the women of my dreams.

I began to own my own story and bring up past chapters around perfectionism and grief.

I began to heal.

Through this healing process, which is still always happening, I set out to start my own business. It’s been through the work I’ve done to launch my own business, leave my 9 to 5 and scale my business financially to a point where my husband could retire, that I’ve found my true purpose.

Uncovering, owning and sharing my own story has allowed me to help thousands of women do the same.

Because I took a chance, looked in the mirror and said, “this is not my ending.”

Now, I have the privilege to support women every day in showing up as their most authentic selves, owning their own story and voice, asking for what they really want and taking transformational risks that change the trajectory of their lives in the most positive way.

I believe every woman everywhere has the power to write her own ending...

...and we’re just getting started.