Long before I became an author, a coach, or the founder of The S.W.A.T. Institute, I was a little girl trying to survive.
My childhood changed overnight when my parents separated. My father and brother moved away, and the years that followed were marked by sexual abuse, homelessness after being kicked out at 15, and facing serious health challenges completely alone. Looking back, I realize those experiences taught me what so many women learn: to stop trusting ourselves and start surviving instead.
At 21, I opened my first fitness club. I competed in Ms. Galaxy, appeared in fitness magazines, and built what looked like a successful life.
Then I became a wife and a mother. I gained more than 100 pounds.
Why do intelligent, capable women abandon themselves?
Why do we know what to do, yet struggle to actually do it?
Why do we override our intuition, our emotions, and even our bodies?
Those questions became a thirty-year journey.
I created what would become Emotional Age and Empowerment Coaching, wrote three books with Hay House, one with Random House, became an Oprah.com contributor, and—with the encouragement of my mentor, Louise Hay—founded The S.W.A.T. Institute to train women to become Empowerment Coaches.
Strategy second.
Your emotions do not live only in your mind. You feel them in your body—in your energy, your exhaustion, your anxiety, your joy, your pain, and your peace.
Your body is always communicating with you.
Then life gave me another lesson.
Perimenopause arrived. I slowly gained weight again. I became busy helping everyone else while quietly ignoring my own body. I knew better, and yet I stopped listening.
Until I got into my 50s and knew if I didn't change things quickly, I was going to be in serious trouble. I lost 55lbs in five months, and realized something else was seriously wrong. After being gaslit by my doctor for nearly 3 years, I finally got the diagnosis that my body had known all along and was trying to tell me...
Endometrial cancer. A radical hysterectomy..
Today, I feel healthier, stronger, and more alive than I have in decades—not because cancer changed me, but because I finally returned to the very principles I have been teaching women for over thirty years.
That is why The S.W.A.T. Institute exists.
Not simply to teach coaching.
To teach women how to come home to themselves.
Because when a woman learns to trust her body, understand her emotions, and honor her own wisdom, she does not just transform her own life.
She changes her family.
Her relationships.
Her business.
And eventually, the world.
I am a Hay House author, an Oprah.com contributor, a mother, a cancer survivor, and the founder of The S.W.A.T. Institute—where women learn to empower themselves, transform others, and lead a movement. I welcome you to our amazing school.
