It Looks Like This Is Goodbye

You may have noticed that things have shifted a little around here.  I’d like to let you in on the scoop.

As a lot of you know, the work I’ve been doing since I started my business has focused on helping women make peace with food and their bodies.  I work privately with clients and  through my Feed Your Soul, Feed Your Body workshops. I was on a mission to help women who were suffering as I had suffered–hating their bodies, spending all of their mental and emotional energy obsessing about what they should or shouldn’t eat and being constantly dissatisfied with they how they looked.

I put all of my energy and resources into building up these workshops and trying to help as many women as possible get off the diet/binge roller coaster and–to take a line from the marketing materials from my show– get out of the mirror and into their lives.

Keeping a Secret

What most people don’t know is that the entire time I was giving these workshops I was straddling the wall between self-acceptance and continuing to diet and trying to change my body. The fact that I was still so deep into my own struggle made me often feel like a fraud.

There’s nothing more difficult than trying and teach what you have not yet learned.

Doing the workshops and my work with clients helped me to heal a lot of my issues, but it’s all still very tenuous and I no longer want my livelihood to depend on how far along I am on the continuum of making peace with food and my body.  I haven’t lived the solution long enough to teach the solution.

It also hit me that building a career from the broken and wounded places is maybe not the best way to go.  It was a difficult decision to make; I have based my creative and working identity around my food and body issues for the past 7 years, but at the same time doing this kind of work was a constant reminder of the place in my life where none of it makes any sense, so why would I try to run a business from there?

Kind of crazy if you ask me.

At the same time, there was something else vying for my attention.  As part of the services I offer I was doing a lot of work with people who were looking to figure out what they wanted to do with their lives.  I had great success leading people to their true calling and helping them make a living at it.

It makes perfect sense since I had so much life experience in this area.  In 1996 I quit my full time job to start a personal training business.  In 2002 my husband Larry ended his 20 year career in the insurance industry to pursue his dreams of being a TV producer and in 2008 I started my coaching business.  All of these things were extremely successful.  I loved reinventing myself and I love helping others do the same thing.

Through my life experience and my work I’ve come to understand that having fulfilling work that you find meaningful is really the bedrock for happiness.

Now On to the Next Chapter

So I’m saying goodbye to Feed Your Soul, Feed Your Body in all of its forms and focusing solely on helping people figure out what kind of work they want to do, how to transition into it (without going into financial ruin or having a breakdown) and make a living at it.

My strong background in marketing has enabled me to also coach self-employed practitioners who want to make a difference in the world be successful financially.  I do this privately but I also have a group program called The Yoga of Marketing.  You can find out more about it here and I’ll be updating you about a free teleclass that you can be part of to learn about this program.  If you are in the self-improvement or healing business this can help you take your practice to the next level or get it on track if that’s what you’re needing to do.

And lastly, to all of you reading who have been part of the Feed Your Soul, Feed Your Body journey, I hope that I was able to help you think differently about the struggle and I wish you continued healing and peace around these painful issues.

Here are the two books that found me when I was ready to stop dieting and start doing the real work of loving and accepting myself right where I was.  I recommend  them very highly: Women, Food, and God by Geneen Roth and Thin Is the New Happy by Valerie Frankel.  Pure salvation, both.