My story and nursing career is very similar to many as I took the traditional path through a four year nursing program and then entered my first job in the hospital setting. I loved what I did, and the patients and families I was able to care for. When I begin to feel some discontent in my staff nurse hospital role, I went back to school for my master’s degree in nursing education and began to teach undergraduate nursing students in additional to hospital work.

After many years of working the long hours and balancing different jobs along with family, I began to feel overwhelmed by the fatigue and exhaustion of it all. Add to it some health issues I was experiencing, that I was not getting answers to from conventional medicine. I began to look at different options and found Integrative health – a discipline that pulls from functional medicine, natropathy/holistic health, bio regulatory medicine and multiple other areas, and it resonated deeply with me. I was able to identify what problems I actual had, even after doctors had told me “everything is normal”, and resolve my symptoms. I knew this was how I wanted to help others and made a pivot in my career to become an Integrative Health Practitioner.

I was in the middle of my integrative practitioner program, I was pregnant with my third baby, and the opportunity presented itself to complete a life coaching certification program. I didn’t know why, but I knew I needed to do that program, and I needed to do it then. I actually wasn’t even familiar with what life coaching fully was, but I recognized that it would be a powerful tool to help the clients I wanted to work with, so I jumped in with both feet. In 2021, I finished both programs and became a certified Integrative Health Practitioner and life coach.

It took me a little bit of time, but after working with several clients I have come to realize how the foundational health work I do goes hand in hand with the mindset work of life coaching. It is how our bodies were created to work. It is why the clients I work with get such transformational results. There are many really good Integrative Health Practitioners and root cause practitioners out there. However, few combine the science of integrative health with the art of life coaching.

It is said that nursing is an art and a science. I continually tell people that the work I do now is what nursing is really meant to be. People are often surprised when I say that I no longer work in the hospital or education and they are quick to imply there was a loss for all I invested in my education and those years of experience. I couldn’t disagree more. It was the foundation that prepared me to do the work I do now, and I wouldn’t change a thing.