My first career was as a child actor. I was on Television a lot of my life. I did lots of commercials, some bit parts in movies and I was Bobby Brown’s love interest in New Edition’s music video for the song Cool It Now. Because of that video – I am a GIF for “Face palming:” Later I had a pretty fabulous international, plus modeling career (Ford and Wilhelmina Modeling agencies.)
People always say “you look familiar”, and I think that’s because they grew up seeing me on tv and in advertising. I’ve been playing the girl next door for most of my life. I am super grateful for all of that work and success. I’ve loved all of it. I got to travel the world, raise my daughter as a single mom, and show her the world, too. It was amazing! But now I’m on a different path.
The most important thing to me is spreading the knowledge of mental health and healing to all people.
My journey to becoming a psychotherapist has come from my own healing experiences.
I became a holistic psychotherapist, meditation and yoga teacher to help other people, other abuse victims, find their voices. I speak on my own experience and have more videos on my Youtube that break down different healing therapies.
One of the most transformational things I did was I began to meditate with chanting. According to Indian philosophy we have all these spiritual power centers called chakras that go up the middle of your body.
Your throat chakra is really important for communication.
My throat chakra was shut down from years of not speaking my truth. I could not communicate my feelings, my thoughts or my truth. It’s a survival and coping mechanism for an abused person to not speak. We think it keeps us safe. But really it crushes our soul. Through chanting sacred words, my communication (throat chakra) opened, and low and behold I found my voice. Meditation connects you to your inner truth and wisdom. Meditation introduced me to me. Meditation helped me to find my power. Chanting helped me to express it.
Therapy helped me find my truth.
Therapy gave me a space to say my feelings out loud to someone who listened, validated that I wasn’t crazy. Validation is very important because most abuse victims have been gaslit. Having someone validate our perspective and our reality is empowering and liberating. Therapy allowed me to process all the abuse, neglect and torture and help rebuild me. I started getting better. Some studies say that just speaking your feelings helps you heal. Going to therapy made me realize how awful my life had been and that I deserve so much more.
I learned what I wanted for my life and what I didn’t want for my life. I began to understand through psychoeducation – the psychology of an abuser, the psychology of a victim, trauma, addiction and what mental health is. Plus I was figuring out who I was. I was blossoming. Therapy was major in my healing journey. THERAPY WAS EVERYTHING. SAVED MY LIFE. My therapist was John Nickerson, and I cannot thank him enough. He helped me save my own life through our sessions together, and he even opened up more routes to healing by suggesting that I go to AA.
A spiritual solution
AA was a spiritual solution to addiction. You take your inventory in AA, which means looking at what character defects we have that we need to change in order to grow. Through Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous I admitted I had a problem, that I was powerless to control my drinking, and that I need the help of a higher power (God/ Universe/ Source) to start healing.
Holistic Psychotherapy
I became a holistic psychotherapist because I used holistic psychotherapy in my journey. The textbook response to being abused is to be reckless with yourself, but I sought ways to be kinder to myself, to love myself, to forgive myself, and to learn and grow through different modalities.
In my mid 30’s I went to grad school, got my master’s degree, and became a psychotherapist. I also became a hands on healer, a yoga teacher, and a meditation teacher.
My goal is to pay it forward and help people find healing through my blogs, my videos and my private practice as a holistic psychotherapist.
