From Breakdown To Breakthrough. Ten Reasons I Do What I Do.

Someone recently asked me what the catalyst was for creating Coaching To Come Alive.

They wanted to know how and why I began my odyssey of purpose. I wished I had a copy of my upcoming book to conveniently place in their hands because that’s the full story. But I did the best I could to answer with only the stripped-down essence which is that ten years ago I completely self-destructed due to repressed trauma, stifled intuition, and a fear of expression so intense I had essentially worn a straight-jacket for thirty years.

The bottom line is I couldn’t keep all of it contained any longer and after a lifetime of suppression my psyche and nervous system blew like a volcano which counterintuitively saved my life, opening me to my truth. Along with that came a spontaneous healing I never could have orchestrated through my previous strategy of striving for hyper-control. I fired “perfection” as my guiding force and had no choice but to temporarily open the door to glorious chaos. Across that threshold entered the flames of the divine feminine, the creative life force, and a psychic opening so intense it nearly tore my mind apart. Imagine all of your senses so numb they had been working at about a quarter capacity for a few decades, then suddenly they were all instantaneously rebooted with the volume blasting at a thousand.

Painful. Incredible. Beautiful. Terrifying. Awe-inspiring. Violent. Healing. Tender. Loving. Heart-breaking. Madness. Sanity. Resolutions. Openings. Endings and Beginnings.

All of it and a million more things were happening simultaneously, dismantling me and putting me back together at the very same time.

My breakdown was my breakthrough.

From that beautiful wreckage emerged the real me, whose identity I had kept imprisoned my entire life for fear she would be annihilated if she showed herself to the world. It took just a moment of madness for me to realize that keeping her contained would be her true destruction.

I started my journey of Coaching To Come Alive because I had to learn how to reassemble my life, piece by piece, after the phoenix rose and I ascended from the burnt ashes. It became my life’s mission to be here for anyone else undergoing epic transformations, having learned so much from and having been set free by my own. The details don’t matter; everyone’s transformation looks differently. But when your spirit is expanding and demanding something of you that you’re too afraid to deliver, when there’s no saying no to this evolution taking place inside of you, and there is only one possible direction– through the fire of growth– that’s transformation. And though it’s painful, when it’s navigated with heart and spirit and courage we are nearly guaranteed a glorious outcome. Because that outcome is the real You.

Ten reasons I created Coaching To Come Alive:

1.) I felt SO alone. I wanted to build a community. When a person sheds their skin, ascends an imbalanced ego, and begins their journey of authenticity (all ingredients of transformation), part of the process is to feel intense isolation. I’ve always wanted people to know they’re not alone.

2.) Sometimes the greatest gifts come through the most grueling experience. I would never want to return to the terror I felt when my mind seemed to be unraveling in service to actually becoming sane. But my ability to stay awake in the face of that pain, rather than seek to numb it or suppress it, is what healed me. I came through it; I transcended it. And it ignited my senses in a way comfort never could have. I consider all of the details of my initiatory transformational breakdown critical for my breakthrough, including the pain. That being said, having come through it, today I choose Joy as my primary teacher. However when pain visits (and of course it still does) I make loving room for it while it needs to be here.

3.) I understand the Phoenix to be very real. We can ascend from the smoldering ashes of any experience. I want to shout that from every mountaintop. I am a hopeless devotee to the power of the human spirit.

4.) Someone once called me a Sherpa, and that image took root inside of me. I can think of nothing I’d rather do than walk with somebody, hand in hand, maybe carrying a little of the heavy weight, through their own ascent of spirit. The courage I see in people every day fills me with awe. It constantly charges my soul.

5.) I believe the planet’s health depends on validating our sixth sense. Acknowledging our intuition as a *normal* aspect of the human experience means we honor Mother Earth, heal the Divine Feminine, become an extension of nature, strengthen our interconnection with all beings (animals, plants, minerals), and return to our sacred empowered roots.

6.) There are too many misconceptions about what is sane or healthy. Don’t tell me Western Cartesian Medicine has all the answers because it just doesn’t, and even Western Cartesian Medicine will tell you that. Open minds are necessary to find solutions for our breakdowns, which are oftentimes a process of returning to full sanity. We are all individuals and require very individualized care when we need help. Some formulas are great for some people and highly destructive to others.

7.) I desperately searched for my future (now present) self when I needed help ten years ago. Now I’m here for others undergoing their own healing journeys and I find that incredibly fulfilling.

8.) Denial, repression, and suppression are deadly epidemics in our country. Hello stress-related diseases! Sometimes through my writing I share a lot. So much, in fact, that it may feel shocking to some people. But we have become so emotionally dissociated as a society that some of us (like me) have taken on the role of over-sharing in order to up the bar and pave the way for healthy sharing in general. At this stage in my life, being that I un-repress people for a living, helping them out of their straight-jackets that I too fashionably rocked for so many years, I can’t stand to be in the presence of chronic suppressors. It breaks my heart. Science has proven that we literally have an effect on the person standing next to us, whether or not we even interact with them. Chronic suppression to an empath hurts, even if it’s not our own. It hurts because it’s a highly destructive process that many of us are not even aware of. It took me years to take off my straight-jacket and I don’t intend to wear anybody else’s. One of the most important roles I have is to help others free themselves.

9.) The virus which will cause the Zombie Apocalypse is fear. Ten years ago I was so numbed out, frozen, dissociated, and stuck that I became something of a zombie myself. Fear created a hellish version of a psychological locked-in syndrome, where I could see things unfolding around me but I just couldn’t respond to them. I couldn’t advocate for myself, or change course, or ask for what I needed, or even love properly. I became a tragic stone statue of a human. A person’s psychological healing and spiritual transformation unleashes a life-saving wrecking ball of sorts, designed to demolish chronic and crippling fear. I live to witness that empowering demolition in others.

10.) Coming Alive will transform the world. As above, so below. 100%. When we evolve our entire energy field starts to transmit a muse-like quality. Others feel it and it gives them momentum in undergoing their own evolution. Howard Thurman, who is with me everyday being the namesake of my business, said it so magically:

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

That’s it. That’s everything. That’s my entire professional purpose in a thousand words. Thank you to those people who constantly ask good questions. I hope you ask them of yourself because sometimes the answers open hidden doors we had no previous awareness of.

Thank you for being here, and thank you for listening. And if you’re struggling with any of this, please, you know where to find me.

Love,

Kristy