Never judge a book by its cover… it's the inside story that counts!
We all have a story to share & the pain that I have endured through the years has not darkened my spirit, in fact it has launched me into my destiny to be able to connect with women on a deeper level and help them to heal on their own journeys.
This is me on my 19th birthday…its hard to imagine that just 1 year previous I was a state athlete & strutting my stuff on the catwalk in swimwear!!!
How does someone go from an athletic size 8 to a size 18 in one year?
I got one killer word for ya.
Stress…….
I was navigating my HSC, a job, constant training for swimming, netball & basketball and looking after my little bros & a mother that was dying of cancer.
It was a lot to navigate and it broke me.
Being an eternal optimist I didn’t know how to handle the emotional stress or what that would do to my body, so I shoved it down and carried on.
But the more I imploded on the inside, the more my body exploded externally and I morphed into someone that was unrecognisable.
For 10 years I struggled on the rollercoaster of diet to diet, losing, putting back on, losing again, putting back on plus more…you get the picture right?
I got so sick of myself when i hit an all time low of seeing the scales click over 100kgs that I made a life altering decision……I no longer wanted to be skinny, I just wanted to be healthy. I wanted to be happy again, and I wanted to find out who the real me was!
This new found goal launched me into wanting to compete again (& become a Sports Nutritionist & PT) this time on a National level in paddling. It was an incredible goal that took a few years but I did it & then exceeded my own goals by paddling internationally for Australia; placing 3rd in the World.
All of this training left me with a major back injury so intense that I was unable to walk
unassisted(particularly in the mornings) for 18months….this “blessing” led me down the path of learning holistic rehabilitation & set me on the path to becoming one of the first Biomechanics Method specialists in Australia.
I was fascinated with the ability of the brain to improve the quality of a clients movements & soon started studying Neuroscience…that’s when Applied Movement Neurology fell into my lap & I began studying with a fervour that I never knew I had in me!
At this point in our journey my incredible Hubster & I had taken on a family of foster kids. This required me to have to cut my business down to 1/4 of what I was doing to become the primary carer & continue studying.
Then our lives took another unexpected turn when my main man was diagnosed with aggressive throat cancer. I became his carer & also had to build my business up quickly almost from scratch as he had to stop working immediately to undergo treatment.
80 hour weeks became my norm…but the cracks started to show. I was looking after everyone else but me…the most important person(you can’t give out of what you don’t have) and just after 18 months of Gman being cleared of cancer I was diagnosed with 3 Autoimmune diseases that completely rendered my body with so much inflammation that I started piling on weight again very quickly, much like in my early 20’s .
Running a holistic health business while you are feeling far from healthy is no mean feat. I felt like an imposter in my own body & a charlatan….
Decision time again…find balance, implement strategies that I was learning through becoming an AMN Holistic Health coach, ask for help, change my mindset, become a better more wholesome version of me….find my happy.
I didn’t bounce back on my own though, and my story of wellness is far from over!!! But i am
happy to say that I am now Autoimmune free!!
All I can say is thank God for guidance, thanks to our incredible AMN community, thank you to Kristy for stepping up into a partnership & being my brain when it would not work & to Junko for taking on more of an instructor role, thanks to an awesome hubby that is so supportive…and a massive thanks to our insane Metamorph community that is our fam, our joy, our tribe!
Kristy and I may be trainers & healers, but we are also human and very aware that at different times of our lives we all hold different amounts of inflammation(stress) from the things that we & our loved ones are going through …what sets us apart from other trainers is our ability to understand our clients body on a cellular & neuro level as well as a bio-mechanical & emotional level…and to be able to help our clients navigate changes in their environment more easily and to help them to live young again.