My story

Like a lot of people, I was raised to believe that a “good life” was build from the outside in - that if I looked the right way, acted the right way, and followed the right path then the inside of life would somehow feel good to.. If I kept things polished and tidy enough everything else would fall into place.

But I didn’t.

Building a life from the outside inward meant that, although my accomplishments were many, I was completely empty by the time life started life-ing.

By my early twenties, I had overcome an eating disorder, become a successful athlete, and graduated college while raising my son. But stepping into adulthood shattered the illusion. I couldn’t maintain the structure of what I was “suppose to do.” The 9-to-5, the gym routine, the endless striving - it all became unbearable.

I was overcompensating with my looks, jealous of other people’s lives, and only felt as worthy as others made me feel. When my fiance at the time had an affair, my mother and her family became estranged (I’m Filipina… IYKYK), and job after job fell apart, I broke down. The systems I’d built to keep myself afloat stopped working.

The success, validation, and assurance that kept me afloat were gone and I was empty.

I had no choice but to rebuild from a better foundation.

I turned to what had always made sense to me: music, books, philosophy, and being in my body. I started learning from the Buddhist monk who visited my University. I read everything I could about the nature of suffering, awakening, and more practical personal development too. I meditated and did yoga. I became an “offish” health and life coach, a personal trainer, and competed in bodybuilding. I studied the mind, body, and the heart and began to evolve from the inside out.

After ten years later, I am a completely different woman because of “practice”.

By “practice”, I mean meeting myself with honesty, asking questions about the true nature of things, and learning about who I am, how I work, and what I need to thrive. “Practice” led me to a deep, organic knowing about by inherent worth, wisdom, and interconnectedness to the wild, magical universe around me.

When we’re playing the game of awakening, the process of seeing ourselves, others, and the world around us more clearly, then we see that life becomes a medium to access deeper truth and authenticity.