Mother, wife, friend, CEO, entrepreneur, woman.. these are all titles I have been honoured to have given to me. Yet, each one of them is grounded in a deep darkness and that darkness threatened to swallow me whole for so many years.

After many instances of abuse, pain, and just utter chaos, I was left floundering and not knowing what to do. I treaded water for years, feeling that the only real accomplishment was to show up for work each day because that took all I had. I’ve learned that to just exist and keep existing, IS an accomplishment at some points in our life and is worthy of feeling proud of.

It was when I chose to focus on the light and dedicate my life to building beauty in all areas of it that I finally started feeling like that pull to the dark all but went away.

I don’t know one adult who has not experienced something that was traumatic to them. So many try to disregard their pain as ‘nothing compared to others’… but the comparison is the first place they go wrong. What matters is how it affects us and how we either learn to use it or allow it to swallow us, and all hope for the life we would love to live, whole.

There are those who will tell you that ‘you are enough’ that ‘you don’t need to change a thing, you are perfect as you are’. But the truth is, if you don’t believe it, you know you are lying to yourself.

The only way I healed was to create proof through my own actions. Action is the key to finding yourself, your worth and your purpose. Most of all, achievement is the only way to prove to yourself that that inner negative dialogue is wrong.

Whether it be inner goals, professional or those connected with your family. Wherever you think the worst of yourself, set goals that rely on no one but you and achieve them.

I now live a life grounded in purpose, love and commitment to myself, to the best version of myself, and to the life I want to live all while being surrounded by great people who support my goals, as I do theirs.

It isn’t easy. But if you want to have the life we all deserve, it will always be on the other side of growth.