You Can Slow Down
I’ve spent my life learning to listen—to my body, my intuition, and my deeper knowing about what really matters. After spending my early years chasing success, I’ve found that real fulfillment comes from alignment, not achievement.
Today, I help others create lives that feel purposeful, grounded, and fully alive—from the inside out.
Life has taught me that…
We don’t need to do as much as we think we do
Listening to your body is essential
Making friends with all of yourself is transformative
My Approach
My work weaves together two threads:
Presence and mindfulness, cultivated through Hakomi’s somatic framework—learning to listen to the body’s wisdom and to meet experience with curiosity and care.
Real-world leadership and entrepreneurial experience, built over decades of guiding teams, international consulting, and creating businesses that align profit with purpose.
Together, these create a coaching style that is both practical and deeply attuned—supporting meaningful change that lasts because it’s grounded in awareness, not willpower.
Clients often say that our work helps them feel more centered, confident, and connected—in their work, their relationships, and within themselves.
My Journey
When the Body Says No
Since I was seventeen, I’ve been searching for a life that felt true to me. In my teens I was trying so hard to be everything I thought I needed to be - straight As, a million extra-curricular activities, prestigious college acceptances, all of it.
And then, one day, I just couldn’t do it anymore. It wasn’t a brave or conscious decision to stop; it was as if something in me simply shut down. You could call it depression, or a crisis, but in truth it was my inner knowing that I couldn’t keep going like this.
Maybe you’ve had your own version of this - pushing until something inside says “enough.”
Instead of heading off to one of the top universities that had accepted me, I moved into a rundown apartment with a friend and took a temp job at a cellular phone company. I paid the bills, went out to dinner, and tried to figure out how to be a person who wasn’t constantly chasing achievement.
Looking back, I can see that my body was teaching me something I couldn’t yet understand intellectually: if I run myself past my limits, eventually my body will say no.
Early Success, & Burnout
By my mid-twenties, I was back in high gear—working sixty-plus hours a week while finishing my computer science degree at night. I had the title, the paycheck, the fast promotions. On paper, I was “making it.” Each success gave me a quick hit of worthiness, but underneath, I was deeply depleted.
I developed chronic hives that lasted for two years. The doctors couldn’t explain it. I couldn’t explain it. But my body knew.
Then, my body spoke up again. I developed chronic hives that lasted for two years. The doctors couldn’t explain it. I couldn’t explain it. But my body knew.
As I started to listen, I heard what it had been trying to tell me: that I needed rest, attention, and care. I started going to yoga classes and paying attention to what my body wanted to be fed. I remember that first yoga class—the teacher asked us to breathe into our bellies, and suddenly I felt my body, maybe for the first time. I walked out with a powerful, embodied sense of connection—earth, sky, being—all one. This, not another promotion, was what I needed.
Still, it wasn’t easy to walk away. After a short vacation, I came back to work and just knew: This isn’t right for me - it’s time to go. I was terrified—of disappointing my colleagues, of wasting my education, of making a mistake. But this time, unlike before, I choose to stop before my body forced me to. I didn’t know exactly what was next, but I trusted that something better would come.
Rediscovering Aliveness
After leaving that job, I started living differently. I took a blissful year off of work to “just” finish my degree, then landed a job at an international consulting company where I could explore the world. I eventually found a rhythm. I’d work for a while, then take a long break —time to just be.
On one of those breaks I reconnected with my relatives in Italy. They welcomed me like a daughter, and I spent several months living with them and learning the language. They grew much of their own food, tended family graves at the cemetery each day, and were deeply interwoven as a family.
This experience opened me to the way I wanted to live - rooted in simplicity, connection & community.
During these years, I began to understand something I’d overlooked:
enjoying my life and doing work I care about is success.
I started finding mission-driven work that aligned with my values, freeing myself from corporate structures that demanded total allegiance. With my work life feeling more free, I set off to pursue my next dream - family.
When Things Fall Apart…
I met a man who lived at a soulful intentional community outside of Seattle. We were in love, and soon became parents, first to twins, then five years later a baby boy. For a moment, it felt like I had everything I’d always wanted.
And then he left. I cried. I screamed. There was no going back to the way it used to be. No getting the ideal family I longed for.
I felt like a snow globe dropped on concrete - my family, my being, a million shards.
In retrospect, this was a gift. In the moment, it felt like absolute, unending, shit.
It was during this period that I encountered Hakomi. I’d been in a lot of therapy over the years. But nothing that invited me to be with myself like this. Nothing that had helped me feel like I actually was up to the task of holding myself through this pain. It was essential in shifting the lowest point in my life into transformative growth.
Something magical happens when the way you’ve been doing life stops working - when all your strategies fail. This is where something new can be born, if you let it.
What I learned was that nothing I “do” out in the world will ever make me feel worthy on the inside. There is no life strategy that protects us from pain. The only thing to do is to meet our own wounds, to feel them in our body, and befriend them in kindness.
Eventually, I began to rebuild. I launched a consulting business that allowed me to care for my kids, my health, and my livelihood. As my stress eased, the Rheumatoid Arthritis I was diagnosed with in my 30s went into remission. I began training as a Hakomi practitioner. Life began to feel possible again.
Cancer and Clarity
In 2024 I was diagnosed with breast cancer. It was a shock - but also made a weird sort of internal sense.
Through years of Hakomi practice, I knew the inner map of my body well. My right side, especially my right chest and shoulder, was where my body held it’s hurt and pain. I had spent countless hours listening to this part, helping it to release from contraction. When the mammogram showed cancer in the two outer quadrants of my right breast, it made sense that cancer had developed in a place that spent most of its life in the shadows.
The Saturday before my double mastectomy, I gathered friends and family at the beach for a circle to honor my body. We wept, we prayed, we sang. They showed up that day - and for every hard day that followed for the next 6 month. I was held in a way I had never know before.
Cancer felt less like a tragedy, and more like a bell ringing: honor your journey. life doesn’t last forever—how do you want to live the rest of yours?
My answers are simple:
To live with compassion for myself and others.
To spend time with my children and family.
To feel what it is to be alive - the good and the bad
To give what I have to offer the world
Coming out the other side, my commitment to meaningful, embodied work is stronger than ever. I continue to run my consulting business, but I’m devoting more of my energy to coaching—supporting others as they navigate their own transformations and learn to live from what’s true.
Work with Me
If something in my story or approach resonates with you, I’d love to connect.
You can learn more about my Personal Coaching and Professional Coaching offerings, or schedule a no-obligation free consultation.
Change doesn’t have to come through crisis.
You can start listening to what’s true right now—and build a life that feels aligned, steady, and alive.
Professional Background & Training
Founder, Contivia Consulting - established 2018
25+ years of leadership and consulting experience in tech, non-profit, and mission-driven organizations
Hakomi Comprehensive Training Year 1, Year 2, and Advanced Training
Certified Hakomi Practitioner (2024)
Hakomi Teaching Assistant (current)
Grief Tending Mentors Program, Core Team (current)
Academic Background:
B.S. in Computing Software Systems, University of Washington
Graduate Studies in International Relations, University of Washington
Hakomi, developed by Ron Kurtz, is a body-centered, experiential healing modality that weaves together Eastern principles of nonviolence, compassion, and mindfulness. In Hakomi, we drop into mindful awareness—slowing down, observing what’s happening inside, and gently exploring new possibilities.
This practice tunes you into the body’s “internal guidance system,” making it a powerful tool in our coaching work for sensing what wants to happen next in your life and work. It also helps shift deep-seated patterns that hold you back from moving forward.
Stuck places often sound like:
“I know I need to set better boundaries at work, but I just can’t seem to do it.”
“I know I should give my partner more space, but I’m afraid they’ll leave.”
Beneath these struggles often lie painful core beliefs formed early in life, such as:
You have to do it all yourself
You’re not enough
It’s safer not to know what you want
Transforming core beliefs unlocks your ability to bring your full self into the world. Hakomi offers tools to move beneath the surface, access unconscious patterns, and create lasting change. Through mindful exploration, you gain deeper self-awareness and the freedom to live with greater choice and possibility
To understand more about my coaching approach, see my Personal Coaching and Professional Coaching offerings.
The best way to understand Hakomi is to experience it.
For a taste of Hakomi, book a free, no-obligation discovery call.