I DID IT!
I had finished my Master’s in Marriage and Family Therapy, including a year spent working with people struggling with addiction. But while I loved the work I was doing, it felt really restrictive and by the book.
I wanted to be able to meet my clients on an individual level – I was less interested in diagnosing them and forcing them to fit a standard that wasn’t working for them. And while I loved working with people, there wasn’t much room for that.
At the same time, I missed what I was doing before my Masters – making websites, running ads, and managing social media for local businesses.
AND I was in the middle of a medical mystery. My body was tired in ways that a 25 year old body just shouldn’t be. And I had serious doubts about my ability to drive 30+ minutes to a job, bright-eyed and bushy tailed on a daily basis.
Burn Out or Something Else?
I thought I was just burnt out. So I took some time off and went back to making websites, figuring I still had time to get licensed and become a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist.
In the mean time, I spent a ton of time trying to figure out what was wrong with me. Regular doctors kept writing me off as depressed, even though I knew I wasn’t.
Either way, I stuck with freelancing, launching websites and coaching clients who ended up breaking into new markets and tripling their sales. I kept hanging out online in women’s entrepreneur groups, helping them fix their sites and figure out their funnels.
After seeing all the doctors, googling all the symptoms, and buying all the crystals, supplements, retreats and meditations (I was getting desperate over here), I finally found a specialist who recognized my symptoms and diagnosed me with a chronic illness. It took years, but knowing what the problem was helped me stop wasting time and money on things at weren’t working and get to a place where I could still have a life even with chronic illness.
Okay, It Wasn’t Really As Easy As It Sounds
To be honest, there was definitely a dark period of time where my symptoms were bad enough to consider whether or not life was worth living. I had to take some time to grieve the life I thought I would have and figure out who I was again. I had to figure out how to live without letting my chronic illness define me.
So I started pole dancing.
Not for money, (although I do support those who do because being sex-positive is awesome) but for fitness and because it was f*cking hard. I knew that if I was ever going to achieve my bigger goals, I needed to commit to something and prove to myself that not only could I do hard things, but I could commit to something that felt totally awkward and get better at it.
Within months, I was doing aerial pole. After two years, I was able to do the splits on both sides.
But I Never Stopped Coaching
Once I came to terms with what I could and couldn’t do, career-wise, I realized that I had never stopped helping entrepreneurs figure what was keeping them from taking the next step in their business.
Not to mention, that using my therapy skills as a coach online was the best way that I could serve and still be there for my health and my family.
Coaching entrepreneurs allows me to take my love for online marketing and my love for helping people succeed and smush them together in a way that works for me. And if you’re reading this, it’s probably because you’re still figuring out how to make everything come together for yourself.
I get it. It’s a process. And it’s okay not to be ready or not to know where it’s all going right now. But if there’s anything you can learn from this story:
Never give up, and do everything you can to be ready when your time comes.
You might not had had to deal with a medical mystery, but if any of this struck a chord with you, let me know in the comments!
