A couple years ago,  I was walking the halls of the school where I work mumbling this mantra again and again to myself, “Dear Universe, show me where I can be useful, please let me be the light, show me where I can be useful, please let me be the light….”

I am a speech-language pathologist for little kiddos, a job which by all definitions is very useful. I help children find their voice, improve their communication skills, engage appropriately with their peers, and learn how to better comprehend language that is coming at them all day long. 

Yet for some reason I had this nagging feeling that I was meant to be doing something more. This restless feeling was nothing new for me. I have been there before. I have a strong intuition that I used to ignore but over the years I have been honing and tapping into it more and more.

The universe answered my call and I was led to pursue a path in life coaching. It was through this path where I found my true life purpose and where I have been able to help people navigate the obstacles in their lives and emerge with more joy and a greater sense of knowing. My own life struggles have been shaping me for this opportunity and I have learned for certain that being  the light comes from having broken open and showing those broken parts to whoever needs to see them. And being useful means that I can use my experiences to help others who are also struggling and I can do this by sharing our story. 

If you read my About Me section you can see how our story came to be. In a nutshell, after a very difficult divorce in my late 30’s, I remarried six years ago and my new husband and I “happily blended” our seven children, who ranged in age from 10 through 16 years old. 

The first thing people do when they find out we are a blended family is to exclaim, “Oh, you are just like the Brady Bunch!” My husband and I half-heartedly laugh because a) we have heard this like a million times, and b) because we hate to burst their bubble that we are nothing like the Brady Bunch. For starters we have 7 kids to their 6 and we are missing the whole Alice live-in housekeeper. Oh, my how we are missing an Alice! Our lives are not perfectly orchestrated where every episode wraps up neat and tidy with a lesson learned and Mike and Carol sitting up in bed reading. Our lives are messy and real. Over the past 6 years, my husband and I have navigated the ups and downs of parenting seven teenagers, all while juggling work, co-parenting with our ex-spouses, and keeping up with the laundry and grocery shopping! Oh, and trying to do this with humor, support, compassion, curiosity, and most of all love. Together we have learned so many valuable lessons that encompass the heart of my goal as a life coach. 

The purpose of this blog is to shed light on those of you that may be experiencing dark days. I hope to use our experiences and my insight to share stories that may resonate with all of you and that may give you hope at a time when things don’t feel so bright.