My name is Krista. I live in Ottawa, Canada. The following is my life in a nutshell, written as part of an exercise for creating copy for my coaching business. It was my first kick at the can. Great to be here. Looking forward to digging deep together tomorrow.
Once upon a time there was a bright, scrappy, freckle-faced kid, who climbed trees, caught snakes, made up songs, and got good grades.
She spent hours imagining she was a teacher, using chess pieces to play school, believing she was captivating these unordinary students with her extraordinary magic.
Most of her time, though, she was really just trying hard to be good, and useful, and smart, and pretty, and tough, and quiet, and funny, and grateful, and helpful, and selfless enough to win her mother’s love and affection.
Alas, as some well know, people can’t give you what they don’t have. 😞
The love never came.
Our little freckled-faced friend would have to figure out another way to get her own needs met. And a lot of times, for a long time to come, she got a lot of things wrong.
She had a huge hole.
And she didn’t know what she didn’t know.
Her head had grown full of lies and misperceptions, her heart full of sadness and anger. Her guts full of confusion and fears.
It just so happens that those conditions weaken the body. It’s totally not surprising that she got sick. Dis-ease creates disease.
At 21 she gave birth to a beautiful baby boy. She also had a breakdown, a breakup, the 1st of four bowel resections, and a near death experience. Not all in the same day, of course!
You know what they say, though.
Life goes on.
She goes to work. She pays her bills. She loves her son. But she still parties every second weekend like she’s trying to die.
The innocent child is the light of her life. Slowly she begins to wake up to a sense of purpose. Something to live for, fight for. A reason to ask for help. She feels a duty to be better.
She goes looking for answers to questions she doesn’t even know she has. She goes looking for something that will help her break the cycles,
end the suffering,
clean up the confusion,
bring some peace.
She enters addiction treatment. She meets a man. She gets kicked out of treatment. And she’s quickly stripped of everything – her health, her job, her family, her friends, her son, her self-respect, EVERYTHING
This is where her dig begins. This is where she begins to surrender. This is where Grace enters. This is where choices are made. This is the part in the story where she begins to reclaim her worth, her truth, her power!
They say that when the student is ready, the teacher appears.
And they did.
Hungry for answers, she heads to the library where books filled with wisdom and instruction launch themselves at her. She consumes them like they were a wellspring in the harsh dessert.
She meets strangers who share their loving kindness, their strength, and their wisdom. She reaches out and taps into community resources for support and guidance.
She is on a quest to learn about love, to end the suffering in her life, to replace confusion with clarity, anxiety with peace, and powerlessness with empowerment.
She was on a mission to heal that hole.
And she did!
Today, that freckle-faced warrior woman is living her childhood dream, teaching her sisters do the same.
And you guessed it, that warrior woman is me!
