Life has a way of leading us down paths we don’t understand at the time. Sometimes, those paths reveal what matters most.

I’m a GenX girl from the Midwest who believed post-college success in the ’90s meant making a big name in a big company, raking in big bucks.

But in 1997, I traveled to Bali, Indonesia, and it woke something in me I couldn’t ignore. Surrounded by beauty and a culture steeped in spirit, I realized with startling clarity that the corporate path I was on wasn’t meant for me. Still, I didn’t know what direction to turn instead.

When I returned home, life handed me the answer in a way I never expected. My dad—6’1”, 225 pounds, full of life, laughter, and strength—was suddenly facing the only thing I’d ever seen truly scare him: cancer.

At just 57, he was given a devastating diagnosis and a prognosis of only months to live. I left my job and traveled with my parents across the country in search of treatments—conventional and alternative—that might give him a chance.

What I witnessed during that time forever changed me. Faced with the limits of life, my dad shifted. He focused on what really mattered, opened his mind to new possibilities, and let go of what he called “the BS”—the big stress that wasn’t worth carrying anymore.

Against all odds, his cancer went into remission. Nearly two years later, though, he died—not from cancer, but from radiation damage caused by an early treatment the doctors never expected him to live long enough to outlast.

Losing him broke my heart, but it also opened my eyes. Those years with my dad showed me something I couldn’t unsee:

we are so much more than we think we are.

Even in his hardest season, my dad found a way to stop carrying what wasn’t his to carry — the worry, the stress, the need to control what he couldn’t. And in letting it go, he became more himself than I’d ever seen him.

That’s when I understood that each of us has a steadier, clearer place within us. When we learn to live from it, it changes how we move through our relationships and our lives. Most of us were simply never taught how.

That realization became the foundation for everything I now do.

Over the next two decades, I studied, trained, developed my work, and coached hundreds of women. Along the way, I worked through plenty of hard relationships of my own.

Why do certain relationships drain us while others restore us? Why do we keep handing our peace away? Why do we take things so personally, even when we know better?

Out of all of that came the Five Levels of Living™—a simple, practical framework for understanding why we respond to the relationships and pressures in our lives the way we do, and how to stop losing ourselves in the middle of them.

Because here’s what I’ve come to believe: You don’t have to change who you are. You just have to change what you’re carrying.

My dad found clarity about what truly mattered when life demanded it of him. You don’t have to wait for a crisis to begin living differently.

If you’re ready to carry less and live more fully, I’d be honored to help you begin.

P.S. Just know—loving dogs isn’t required, but it definitely earns you extra credit with my Chief Happiness Officer.