Kelly’s Story

I live with my right husband and kids along Oregon's Cascade Range. Prior to that I spent most of my life in California's Central Valley.  I’m a pop culture junkie, fempreneur, epic TV-fandom junkie, and a raving 12 - Go Seahawks!

I use my life experiences and education to help women rediscover themselves. After struggling with my own life challenges, I woke up and decided that my well-being did matter.

So I dove headfirst into recreating the life that I wanted.

NOT one that had been designed for me by familial, patriarchal, or societal expectations.

My biggest challenge was finding my way out of the depths of depression and burn out back in 2003. As part of reclaiming my life, I sought therapy and rediscovered my own divine womanhood. I immersed myself in all things metaphysical and honed those skills!  

My metamorphosis turned into a passion that now drives me to help other women be truly fulfilled in their lives.

Licenses and Certifications I hold:

Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist - Oregon(#T1477)

Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist - California (#MFT106901)

TBHI Certified Telebehavioral Health Practitioner

Certified Life Coach

My Story….Or why I do what I do

The Way Down Low

Lying on my office floor, I felt the nap of the carpet, short and rough against my tear-stained cheek. All I wanted to do was sink into the floor and let it cover me so that I disappeared. I was 32 with two young children and grieving over the death of my marriage.

How could I have made such a mistake, when 10 years ago, walking down the aisle, I felt so sure ? 

I swore I would NEVER be divorced. But, I was. What would my life be like now?

Who would want me – with two children and in my 30s?

I was a failure. Defective. A total fuckup.

In that moment, I could not imagine that a loving, supportive, thriving relationship really existed.  Those happy couples that I saw on TV or the few that I encountered in my social circle were just faking it. I was sure they didn't really exist. It was a unreachable ideal; a sweet, Disney fairy tale told to young girls.

The nightmare that was my first marriage confirmed that. 

So there I was, divorced. A shell of who I used to be.

I Will Survive 

As badly as I just wanted to disappear, life had to go on for me. The kids still needed to be picked up from school, fed, bathed, etc.

So, I did what any voracious reader like me would do, I headed to the local bookstore. I bought 3 books:

1. The Secrets of Overcoming Verbal and Emotional Abuse

2. Joint Custody with a Jerk

3. Releasing the Goddess Within

for no particular reason other than that they called to me. I read a line in one of them that said, in short,

The bad news was that I was responsible for where I was in my life. By allowing what I had allowed to happen to me…

AND

The good news was that I was responsible for where I would go in life. By allowing how I would be treated -by others and by own self. 

DAYUM. That was a hard pill to swallow. But I digested it and let the bombshell of it slowly soak into me.

That was it. I dove head first into healing myself. I needed to be all I could for my kids because in this transitional time in our lives, they needed me. And I needed me.

I worked hard on healing myself through therapy and every self-help book I could get my hands on. In the process, I learned to love myself again. I had been trudging through each day, falling into bed at night and just waiting to do it all again tomorrow. Slowly, I began to smile more and embrace life again.

I was making my way out of the darkness.

Here Comes the Sun 

And then wouldn’tcha know it, along came a new man who only had eyes for me – a strong, stable, kind man. We began dating and then when I thought we were all ready, I introduced him to the kids. They loved him and he loved them. But since he never had children before, it was an adjustment for us all.  

Before you knew it, he asked me to marry him. And I said yes.

After all this time, I still recall his exact words, “I realize that by asking you to marry me, I am not marrying just you. I am marrying both of the kids too. I am not looking to replace their father, but I can be their best friend.”  

So, yeah, that was awesome. But as much as I wanted to believe him, I believed in everything my first husband said too. There was no way that I would put my kids through another divorce; introduce a man into their lives and then have him leave when it, too, didn’t work out.

I was determined not to let that happen again. 

So we worked. Hard.

We examined our relationship, discussed our future, our finances, made decisions about how we would raise the kids, how we could grow together and not apart, etc.

WITCHY WOMAN

And I never stopped working on me either. As I grew more comfortable in my skin, I heard something deep in meas calling. A part of me that I’d left behind in an effort to make my first marriage work.

I dusted off my old witchy box. I had carefully saved scraps of writings, articles, books, trinkets over the years. These were the forbidden teachings of the Divine. The Inspired. The Fullness of Life. Things that can’t be explained. Things that can only be felt. Things that can only be experienced. Things that told me that other’s ideas for my life did not have to define my life or my happiness. The Media. The government. Family. Friends. My boss. My husband.

My life was my own. To touch the Divine and to write my own story. There was something more than the life I was being shaped to believe should be mine. The one I had been pressed into.

In this box, I rediscovered pages of my teenage writings. The Astrology, New Age, Tarot resources of my youth.

I had banished them from sight during my patriarchal, fundamental-Christian first marriage. As much as I tried to be the stereotypical, dutiful, Christian wife, I could never let these go. So I secreted them away in my memory box.

Rereading them was like going home. Back to myself. I began to add more and more to my books, tools, and writings. I tried my first meditations, opened my chakras, and marked special occasions with ritual. I began to think more openly. Finding the comfort of the Mother, as well as the Father. God is not a single parent, people!

I came to know my higher self. To feel the Divine within me, within others. To develop my intuition. Met my spirit guides.

I experimented with integrating the shadow side of myself that I had been so afraid of before. By recognizing her, I took away the power of fear that dictated my life. I channeled it to benefit me, and others.

I began to look at my life differently. Not as a day-to-day journey toward how much I could accomplish before eventual death.

I saw life as a daily discovery of, and honoring of, my soul path. I actually paid attention to the fact that I had a mission to accomplish in this lifetime and it became important to honor it.

I had never felt more free or more fulfilled before.  

Work It 

Has it been happy, happy, joy, joy since then? Mostly. But not completely. My new little family went through a lot of adjustment our first few years. We have weathered the death of family members, the birth of our special needs daughter (heart condition), addiction and the collapse of a business (and our livelihood). Through all of the trials in our marriage though, we grew closer, instead of apart.

It was after the collapse of our business (thank you, housing bubble burst of 2008) that we took stock of our situation and made some plans for our future. He went back to his family business and I joined corporate America. I sat behind a computer all day and tele-communicated with clients on the East Coast. 

While it was fascinating and taught me a lot, I knew it was not my calling. I learned how to lead a team with differing points of view, navigated corporate infrastructure, and honed my computer skills. All while having a deep crisis of consciousness because I knew deep down that I was not honoring the gifts that I was blessed with. I was not destined for cubicle life.  

Thus, my husband suggested I try life coaching.

Having witnessed my post-divorce struggle, our integration as a couple and new family, and the reemergence of my Self, he thought I’d be a natural.

And I was. 

Groovin' 

In the Spring of ‘09, I opened Who Says?

As in, who says this has to be your life? I focused my coaching on women finding and honoring their life path. They were usually in transitional phases of their lives - divorce, college graduation, empty-nest. I wanted to help women discover themselves the same way that I had.

From there I developed an interest in helping women tap into their inner goddesses – chiefly their passion goddess, to live life fully. Sex is essential to the complete human experience. I had grown up being known as ‘a prude’. I certainly didn’t want to be considered a ‘slut’ and it was pretty much a thin line between the two back then. Part of my emergence as fully woman included giving myself permission to make the experience of sex important. And it was incredibly freeing.

Warrior Woman Life Coaching became the combination of both of these focuses.  

You Live, You Learn

In 2012, my life-long love of learning prompted me to go even further and get a Master’s Degree in Marriage and Family Therapy. I wanted to take what I was doing in my coaching even deeper. I thought that I had learned so much about myself before I started coaching. Well, getting my master’s was like two straight years of intensive therapy. And I learned that I had much more to explore.

The process of becoming a therapist involves breaking down and examining all of your shit. It’s tough work. But it’s essential because I couldn’t take that into session with me. My thoughts and feelings need to be about what my client is going through. Not about how what they’re going through affects me.

After the classes portion of my Master’s program was done, we were required to work for 6 months in a practicum setting. For free.

SO this white, suburban, soccer mom dove into the nitty-gritty of the mental health world by working with the urban homeless population. My clients were racially and socio-economically disadvantaged. They were diagnosed with both addiction (almost exclusively meth) and a mental disorder. They were fighting for their lives.

I swear they taught me more than I taught them. I am so thankful for that experience because I grew more as a citizen of the world. I learned about the range of struggles in the human condition. It made me a more whole clinician.

Gettin’ Jiggy With It

After graduation, I worked in private practice for a while, mostly with couples and groups. Groups are my favorite thing to do. There is a certain magic that happens when you get several people together and they grow with each other.

This is also where I began working in Teletherapy, counseling high-powered executives and business owners who didn't want the stigma of coming to a therapy center. It quickly became clear how beneficial teletherapy is since they otherwise wouldn't have had the time to attend sessions. 

That’s how Winter Wellness came to be.

I also broadened my medical knowledge working in a rural healthcare clinic. I saw the struggle of the rural population living where resources are scarce. I still work in this setting providing therapy for people with OCD, chronic pain, burn-out, depression, and anxiety. It keeps me on my toes, abreast of resources, and up-to-date in the therapy industry.

Because I want to stay up to date in the therapy industry and have positive exchange with other colleagues, I am heavily involved in professional organizations. In California, I have served on the Board of Directors for the past 3 years in my local professional organization, CA Assoc of MFTs, Central San Joaquin Valley Chapter (CAMFT-CSJV). Since settling in Oregon, I’m jumping into the local therapist scene here too.

So this is real. This is me. I’m exactly who I’m supposed to be.

Overall, my goals are lofty, I know. But they are pure, heartfelt and Divinely inspired.  

And that is why I do what I do.