work with me
In fall of 2022, Sasha Ayad asked if I would write a brief contribution to the book she was working on with Stella O’Malley and Lisa Marchiano. I love that it was included in the Radical Acceptance section of the chapter titled, “It’s Not Really About Gender”. From their 2023 book, When Kids Say They’re Trans: A Guide for Thoughtful Parents:
When I discovered my daughter was deeply entrenched in gender ideology, it shattered my ego and threw me into a dark state of desperation and impotence. I tried “all the things” to get her to desist yet she dug in deeper. Knowing I couldn’t control her experience, I decided to take charge of my own.
My daughter was trying to opt out of womanhood, so I decided to model a womanhood I thought she might find attractive. I reframed this experience and accepted what I came to see as my daughter’s invitation for me to heal myself. I sought out ancient wisdom to remind me that humans have great capacity to overcome suffering, and that deep pain is what forges us into our strongest selves. I embraced the idea that the thing we focus on tends to expand. I turned my attention to those positive aspects of myself, of her, and of my family that would see us through this excruciating circumstance–and every time we all laughed together, I allowed it to comfort me and to communicate, “we’ll be okay, we got this.”
I also tuned into myself and nurtured a relationship that I had ached for in the past–a trusting relationship with my intuition. I pursued awe and wonder to remind me that I am both insignificant and part of the gorgeous fabric of a magical universe. Instead of letting this break my spirit, I allowed it to break my heart open and I ended up falling in love with the richness of life. I let go of my stranglehold on my daughter’s future because I recognize that’s her work now. I try to be a mother who models how to move through the hardest of things and come out the other side stronger, wiser, and more compassionate. As I write this, my adult daughter still identifies as transgender, but I’m not afraid anymore.”
A bit more about me: I’m a former elementary classroom teacher that’s obsessed with the human experience and our development over the lifespan. In 2014, I became a certified life coach and delved deep into concepts like positive psychology, attachment, and human thriving. When my daughter started exhibiting signs of excessive anxiety in 2018, and I discovered she’d been using a different name with her friends and seemed to believe she was transgender, I (like you?) was plunged into the disturbing and destabilizing experience of researching what was happening in the world. Thus began my “dark night of the soul.”
I’ve since learned dark nights such as these can be invitations to reorient toward Life in a more humble, compassionate, open-hearted way. I know this approach is not appealing to everyone, but as I’ve put my education and life coaching skills to work to help many moms now to regain solid ground, rediscover their intuition, and reorient themselves toward this circumstance, my work has gained some attention. I’ve been interviewed on Gender: A Wider Lens, You Must be Some Kind of Therapist, Calmversations with Benjamin Boyce, and most recently, Third Factor Magazine.
A couple ways to explore working with me:
I’m currently wrapping up intensive training and certification in depth coaching. This is a Jungian approach designed to help you attain the deep self-awareness necessary for transformation and longterm change. My role is to use the coaching process to guide you to develop a healthy relationship with your emotions, and to circumvent the ego so you can discover and integrate what’s in your shadow. It’s intense work that requires readiness and full commitment. To see if it might be a good fit for you, I invite you to take this quiz: Depth Coaching Readiness
If you already know that you’re ready to reorient to this situation, using it to evolve to your next level of emotional wisdom, resilience, and vitality, you can schedule a complimentary discovery session with me to get a sense of what it’s like to work with me and to ask any questions you might have about my approach: Schedule a Discovery Session
This doesn’t have to destroy you or your family. There is another way.