But this time, something felt off. Several times in the last few days I noticed I felt irritable, and annoyed. And as I traveled home yesterday, I noticed how heavy my body felt. I wasn’t just tired… I was depleted. The kind of tired that doesn’t come from just effort alone, but something deeper.

At first, I tried to rationalize it. I have ADHD, and being out of my routine, masking all day long and trying to find my voice in a busy room is always a recipe for some level of nervous system fatigue.

All of that was true… but I knew there was more to the story.

Instead of pushing through like I used to, I took it real easy today. I went for a couple of long walks. I spent time in the forest behind my house. I gave myself space to breathe. I didn’t rush to make sense of it all, I just let myself feel.

And here’s what happened when I softened into the confrontation and when I let the irritation and depletion speak to me instead of stuffing it down or powering through.

Clarity arrived.

And not the kind of intellectual clarity that comes from lists and logic, but the kind of soul-deep clarity that only shows up when you’re willing to feel what’s uncomfortable.

This working model isn’t working anymore.
This client engagement isn’t in alignment.
I’m not meant to be a fractional operator embedded in someone else’s team. That’s not who I am and it’s not what I’m here to do.

My gift - my entire value in the world - is to catalyze transformation. To enter a business at the right moment, bring clarity and structure to what feels messy and murky, and then move on. That’s my zone of genius. I’m a transformation agent. I don’t do well staying beyond the turning point, because I’m not here to maintain the system… I’m here to reinvent it.

And because I gave myself permission to feel instead of repress, I opened a portal for intuitive truth to come through. That truth allowed me to redesign the entire engagement - not just in a way that works better for me, but in a way that serves my client more powerfully too.

I pitched a new project-based structure that allows me to do what I do best: clarify, simplify, build systems for scale, and exit cleanly - leaving behind a clear path for the next phase of their growth. It’s more profitable for me in the short term and more impactful for them in the long run. Win-win all around.

And it only happened because I paused and listened. Because I didn’t override the signal my body was sending.

This is the heart of my Freedom Experiment.

It’s not about doing less, it’s about tuning in more.
It’s about letting yourself feel what’s really there, so you can move forward from a place of truth instead of defaulting to what’s familiar.

So often we’re taught to suppress what feels inconvenient.
We’re told to keep it together, push through, stay productive, stay positive.
But repression shuts down your access to inner guidance, and without that connection to yourself, your decisions become reactive, habitual, or fear-based.

You can’t move toward expansion while denying what your body, your emotions, and your intuition are trying to tell you.

When you let yourself feel fully, clarity always follows.
When you soften instead of resist, the message gets loud and clear.
And when you trust what’s coming through, you begin to make decisions that are rooted in power, not fear.

True freedom only exists when you're fully expressed in your humanness - and that’s only possible when you trust yourself ❤️

Sports.
School.
Career.
Parenting.

It was all one big stage — and I was trying to earn a standing ovation just to feel like I was enough.

But today, something hit me. I was listening to a podcast and they were talking about elite athletes and what makes them exceptional.

The best athletes aren’t afraid to lose.
They’re detached from the outcome.
They perform at their best, not because they’re obsessing about the future…
but because they’re anchored fully in the present. In the now.

I’ve spent the last decade peeling back layer after layer of programming that told me I had to achieve in order to be valuable. I’ve been shedding inherited stories — about success, womanhood, leadership, motherhood, money, identity — that never actually belonged to me.

The first rupture was when I left my cushy (at that time) job and traveled the world with Justin. That trip cracked open a part of me I didn’t know existed. It was the first time I experienced safety in being — not doing.
No gold stars.
No medals.
No performance reviews.
Just presence.
Just life.

And yet, when we came back, I defaulted right back into the old operating system.

I had babies.
I had bills.
I had ambition.

So I channeled it all into my career — the next arena to prove myself. Until I got laid off and burned out. Until my body and spirit whispered what I had been unwilling to admit:

Enough.

That was the second rupture. The redirection.

I found yoga. My identity became wrapped in spirituality. It was everything to me in those years. So much so that I was teaching full time. It was my only source of income because I was so bought in to that version of myself.

And then I joined Shopify. I continued teaching on the side while working my way up to leadership roles. I eventually jumped ship to other companies and found myself in senior leadership in a high stress environment.

And my practice fell away.
I wasn’t prioritizing it.
I was too busy.
Too focused on career growth, on making the money, on holding everything together while the world crumbled around us post-pandemic.

I kept teaching… but I wasn’t practicing. I wasn’t connected to myself at all. I would literally have to practice right before class just to feel even somewhat embodied. Because I didn’t want to walk into the studio and be a fraud. But deep down, I already felt like one. I wasn’t living my truth.

Eventually, I made the decision to step away from teaching in 2023.
It felt incongruent.
I was no longer operating in alignment with my values.
I was out of integrity, and it caught up to me.

So I stepped back.
I took space.
And I needed that.

And then I got laid off in the fall of 2024 from a job that had consumed me. That had emptied me. And that was the wake-up call I didn’t know I still needed.

I realized I had been putting my REAL self second.
I was in performance mode. Hustle mode.
Completely disconnected from my truth.
Desperate to prove my worth…
To a boss who couldn’t see me
To a system that wasn’t designed for me.
To a world that only values what it can quantify.

I got so attached to the identity of “rising star.” I was going to be a VP. I was going to get that title. I was going to prove it.

I had a seat at the table.
And I was so obsessed with protecting it…
I forgot who I was.

That layoff — that final rupture — was what I needed to finally remember.

To remember that I don’t need to label myself anymore.
That I don’t need a title to be powerful.
That I don’t need external validation to be impactful.

In my work.
In my presence.
In how I listen.
In how I guide.
In how I lead.

I’m no longer striving to become someone.
I’m remembering who the fuck I am.

And that remembering — that deep, cellular, soul-level remembering — is what makes me a leader.

It’s not the performance.
It’s not the titles.
It’s not the external applause.

It’s the devotion.
To staying awake.
To living in truth.
To staying in alignment with myself.
And to being of service to others.

Every day, I continue returning home to myself.
And that is the most radical act that I know.

Because in a world that teaches us to perform for love, to hustle for worth, to brand ourselves into oblivion…

Choosing to remember who you are — before the programming, before the pressure, before the projections — is the most rebellious, revolutionary thing you can do.

That’s what The Freedom Experiment is really about.

Not just scaling a business or manifesting a vision.
But stripping away everything that’s not you…
So you can finally meet the version of you that’s been buried underneath.

I’m not chasing freedom anymore.
I’m living it.
And every day I get closer.
Every day I choose again.

This is the work.
This is the way.

We went for brunch, and somewhere between catching up and swapping stories, I found myself saying, “I think I’m having a midlife crisis.”

I was mostly joking, but it’s been a WILD few weeks.

We were talking about how, when you start healing, when you stop performing, when you start listening to your inner voice again... you also start to realize how much of your life was built by a different version of you. The friendships, the routines, the expectations—it all starts to feel like clothes that don’t quite fit anymore.

That’s exactly what this season is.
A shedding. A slow, painful, liberating unraveling.

That conversation helped me name what I’ve been feeling for a while now (thanks, wifey!)

And it reminded me: I’ve been here before….

The liminal space.

That space where everything you thought you knew starts to fall apart. The in-between, where your old identity starts to dissolve and nothing concrete has emerged yet to take its place.

For most of my life, I was chasing a version of success that had been handed to me like a checklist:
Climb the corporate ladder ✔️
Get the C-level title ✔️
Earn the big bucks ✔️

And I was all in.
Partly because I genuinely loved that life and knew I had what it takes—
And partly because it fed my ego in a way that made me feel safe.

But underneath that ambition was a survival pattern, a fear of not being enough, a hunger to prove myself.
That “good girl” conditioning runs DEEP, y’all.

I wasn’t just succeeding…

I was addicted to succeeding.

In 2020, we upgraded our house and moved to a beautiful estate home in the woods. We got the pool, the nice furniture, the fancy cars. In 2022, we bought a second investment property. Like I said, I was addicted.

On the surface, it looked like we had it all. Truly living the dream.
But behind the scenes? It was… A LOT.

One of the biggest mistakes we made was blindly trusting our mortgage broker. We took on variable rate mortgages—on both properties—when interest rates were low. And we all know how that has gone in the last couple of years. Rates went up, and suddenly, I had to keep making more just to keep everything afloat.

So I did what high achievers do: I pushed harder.
More effort. More hustle. More proving.
More pressure on myself to “make it all work.”

But at what cost?
I became numb. Detached. Short-fused.
To everyone else, I looked like I had it together.
But at home, I was irritable and exhausted.
Disconnected from the people I love and completely out of sync with myself.

I felt the stress in my body before I could name it.

The jaw clenching.
The insomnia.
The constant tightness in my chest.

My nervous system was stuck in high alert.
I was operating like a machine, not a person.
All doing, all urgency, all output, all the time.
Leaning so far into my masculine energy that I left no space for my feminine to breathe.

No softness. No surrender. No space to feel.
Just constant effort and control.

And here's the thing:
When your body is in survival mode, you can’t access your truth.
Your brain is overloaded. Your intuition gets drowned out.
You stop hearing yourself.

That’s when you get pulled into someone else’s vision.
That’s when the algorithm sells you your worth.
And you believe it.
Not because you're shallow, but because you're disconnected.
Because your body is too exhausted to fight back.
Because when you're dysregulated, you're easier to control.

And that’s what nobody talks about.

Disconnection isn’t just spiritual.
It’s physiological.
And it’s systemic.

When your body is worn down and your nervous system is fried,
you become more susceptible to manipulation—
by capitalism, by the government, by systems that rely on your compliance.

You become easier to market to.
Easier to manage.
Easier to extract from.

And the cycle repeats forever—
until something snaps you awake.

The layoff was the awakening.

I didn’t just lose a job last fall. I lost the version of me I’d built my entire life around. I lost the people I spent the most time with, overnight. I lost an entire identity.

About a month after the layoff, I wrote about the liminal space…

I said then:

“The space between what was and what’s next is where transformation takes place—if we’re brave enough to embrace it.”

I thought I had embraced it.
But looking back, I’d barely scratched the surface.

The last 6 months have been an absolutely WILD initiation, a full-body unraveling of everything I thought I knew, an ego death in the truest sense. I’ve been cracked wide open—like a diamond shattered into a million fractals—reflecting light I had forgotten existed.

And I realize that now I’m actually in the liminal space.

It’s disorienting AF. I can feel who I’m becoming—more grounded, more intuitive, more fully me.
But I’m still living in a life the old version of me designed.
A life that made perfect sense for who I was…
but no longer fits who I’m becoming.

And there’s grief in that.
Because even when you’re ready to evolve, letting go is hard.

Because when you’ve spent years building a life around who you thought you were supposed to be, it’s terrifying to imagine what happens when you let it fall away.

Will people be disappointed?
Will I lose relationships?
Will I regret not holding it all together?

Freedom isn’t what we’ve been programmed to think it is.

It’s not the dream house or the vacations or the high paying salary.

Freedom is being able to hear your own voice.
And having the capacity in your body to trust it.

It’s saying no when everyone else says yes.
It’s letting go when your nervous system says enough.
It’s choosing what’s true, even when it costs you comfort or approval or identity.

And yes, it’s scary.
It’s deeply uncomfortable to let go of what was—especially when you worked so damn hard for it.
But I think that’s the sacred part.

The life I’m creating now is rooted in truth.
And I’m willing to burn down anything that isn’t.

Because to me, freedom isn’t ease.
It’s sovereignty.
It’s the ability to hear your own voice over the noise of the world—and choose to follow it.
Even when it’s inconvenient.
Even when it’s terrifying.
Even when it asks you to let go of everything you once were.

If you’re in the liminal space too—if you’re waking up, letting go, seeing through the illusion—I see you.

You’re not behind.
You’re not broken.
You’re reclaiming yourself.

And you are exactly where you’re meant to be ❤️

Not political power. Not government overreach. Not left vs. right.

But personal sovereignty.

The kind that lives in your body. The kind that whispers to you when something feels off. The kind that can’t be outsourced to a party, a leader, or a trending headline. The kind that’s being eroded every single day in this country—and that we need to fight to reclaim.

And I use that word fight very intentionally.

Because we are at war with numbness. With distraction. With the kind of disconnection that makes it easier to control us.

And the only way out is in.

I Used to Do What I Was Told

I wouldn’t have called myself a people pleaser necessarily, but I was a rule follower for sure. Conditioned, like so many of us, to believe that success meant checking boxes:
✔️ Go to university.
✔️ Get a steady job.
✔️ Climb the ladder.
✔️ Earn the title.
✔️ Build the life.

And I did all of it. I got the degrees. Landed the roles. Chased the promotions. That was the version of success I had internalized without ever really questioning it.

So when the pandemic hit, and the messaging was loud and clear—do your part, follow the rules, get the jab—I didn’t question that either.

I got vaccinated. Twice.

At the time, I was working in a leadership role at Shopify. I was busy, stressed out, distracted. I was still teaching yoga, but I wasn’t practicing. Still preaching self-trust, but unable to access mine. I was out of my body, out of my intuition, out of alignment.

I was scared. And I went along with what I was told. Like so many of us did.

Not because I believed in it, but because I didn’t know how to hear myself. I wasn’t grounded enough to question anything. I didn’t have the energy, the space, or the clarity to step back and say: Wait. Does this actually feel right to me?

I know now that when we’re disconnected from our own bodies—our own rhythms—we become easy to manipulate.

That’s what the system counts on.

The Veil Started to Lift

In 2022, I left Shopify for a VP role at a startup that quickly fell apart and I was laid off in 6 months 🫠

That could’ve been the end of me. But it wasn’t.

Instead, I started doing what I now see as my real work: I turned inward. I got back into my body. Back to daily movement. Time outside. Breathwork. Rest. Slowness. Nourishment. Listening. All of it.

It didn’t happen overnight, but slowly—like peeling off layers—I started to see again. Not with my eyes, but with my gut. My heart. My nervous system.

And what I saw pissed me off.

All the things we were told not to question? I started questioning them. All the people we dismissed as conspiracy theorists? I started listening to them. All the “misinformation” that was actually just alternative perspectives? I started seeking them out.

And once you see, you can’t unsee.

The Real Threat Isn’t Protest—It’s Power

Let me say this clearly: a woman who is deeply rooted in herself, who is in tune with her body and her power, is a threat to every system designed to keep her small.

When you know how to regulate your nervous system… when you can tell the difference between fear and intuition… when you’re connected to the earth, to source, to your own damn truth… you become ungovernable.

You stop looking for permission. And you start making moves that come from something way deeper than politics or opinion.

And when enough of us do that?
That’s when the system starts to crack.

We are not meant to outsource our knowing. We are not meant to be “managed.” We are creators, life-bringers, leaders, and disruptors.

And the more we remember that, the more dangerous we become to the systems that rely on our obedience.

Why I’m voting Conservative

I’ve voted Liberal for most of my life. I still hold many values that are considered “liberal”. But the Liberal government has nearly destroyed our country in the name of control.

They’ve overreached. They’ve censored. They’ve gaslit. And they’ve made it nearly impossible for anyone to question what’s going on without being labeled or shamed.

Knowing what I know now (and everyone knows because finally the truth has come out), I would NEVER get vaccinated. I will never again blindly comply. I’m not afraid of saying that out loud anymore, and that’s thanks to the voices of so many people who warned us and risked everything to speak the truth.

I’m not voting Conservative because I’ve had some huge ideological shift.

I’m voting Conservative because I’m choosing freedom over control. Sovereignty over compliance.

This Is What the Freedom Experiment Is About

This newsletter isn’t about politics. It’s about power. Your power.

It’s about remembering who you are and choosing to live, lead, and vote in alignment with that—no matter what anyone else thinks.

It’s about reclaiming your sovereignty in a system designed to divide you from it.

If this stirred something in you, let it. Let it move through your body. Let it wake you up. And when it’s time to vote, don’t do it from fear. Don’t do it from habit. Do it from truth.

You already know what to do ❤️

I’m constantly having this conversation in my head:

Do we adapt and use the tools that are reshaping the world—AI, automation, digital transformation—even if they seem to be pulling us away from our humanity?

This isn’t a theoretical debate for me. It’s something I feel in my body every day. The conflict between expansion and grounding. Between the digital and the divine. Between the desire to grow and create something meaningful—and the desire to just be, unplugged, outside, living in rhythm with the earth.

I wonder if I’m alone in this inner tug-of-war. Or if more of us are quietly navigating this tension without ever saying it out loud.

The Pull Toward Presence

There’s a version of me that wants to disappear into the jungle. To log off for good. To delete every app, abandon the algorithm, and never touch a screen again. That version of me wants slow mornings, long hikes, and days defined by sunlight, not Slack notifications.

And yet, here I am, writing these words with the help of AI.

Not because I’ve surrendered to the machine, but because I’ve found a way to use it without losing myself. If anything, this tool has brought me closer to the truth I’ve always wanted to express. It’s helped me take the spirals of my ADHD brain and shape them into clarity. It’s given structure to my insights and momentum to my creativity.

Before AI, I used to burn out trying to translate my thoughts into something coherent. Now, I feel more resourced, more efficient, more focused—like someone finally handed me the tool I didn’t know I needed. One that works with the way I think, not against it.

Still, I feel the contradiction every time I use it. Because even as it helps me create more of what matters, it also tethers me to the very systems I sometimes want to escape.

The Paradox of Power and Presence

This is where it gets messy.

AI has become a tool that allows me to have more impact in less time. To capture ideas on the fly. To write faster. To build more. Which means I have more space to rest, to be with my kids, to lift and walk and breathe. In a strange way, it’s one of the things that’s given me more time to live the kind of life I’ve been craving.

But I’m not naive. I know how slippery the slope is.

I know how easy it is to fall into a dopamine loop—especially with ADHD. To seek validation. To mistake ego for insight. To optimize instead of embody. I’ve seen the way AI can become a mirror for our bias.

So I stay awake to it. I question my own motivations. I pause to check:

Am I creating from alignment, or just performing for a reward system I didn’t consent to?

This is the cost of consciousness in a digital age. You don’t get to opt out of the conversation if you’re going to use the tools. But you can use them without being consumed by them. That’s the dance.

Leveraging the Tools, Staying in Integrity

I didn’t start The Freedom Experiment to build a brand or grow a platform. I started it because I needed a place to process the unraveling. To ask deeper questions about what it means to live a life that feels authentic and true.

And ironically—or maybe perfectly—AI has become one of the tools that supports me in this process.

Not because it’s making me better, but because it helps me move through my blocks. It gives me permission to share more often. To stay in motion. To follow a thread and articulate it without the fatigue that used to silence me.

But that freedom comes with responsibility.

To check my ego. To remember my values. To stay grounded in what actually matters: not the pace of output or the performance of productivity, but the feeling of being in alignment with my purpose.

AI helps me create faster. But it’s still my inner compass that tells me if I’m creating the right things.

This Is What Freedom Looks Like (For Me)

Freedom isn’t a binary choice between living off the grid or diving headfirst into the machine.

It’s learning to hold the paradox.

It’s having the courage to engage with the tools of the future while staying rooted in the wisdom of the past.

We can want wealth and still live simply.

We can build with technology and still honor the earth.

We can lead with strategy and still stay soft and human and real.

For me, freedom looks like using AI to create space. So I can work faster—and then go outside, rest, travel, move, be.

It looks like building a life where my work supports my values, not the other way around.

It looks like holding the contradiction—and choosing, every day, to keep checking in with what’s true.

So if you’re also in this place—between the earth and the algorithm—you’re not alone. This is the new frontier. This is where we figure it out - together ❤️

The grief. The unraveling. The letting go of who I used to be.

And lately, I’ve been sitting in what comes after the grief.

Not quite the “after” in a tied-up, polished sense.

But the part where the fog is clearing just enough for me to start hearing my own voice again.

That voice has been whispering one thing, over and over:

It’s time to unlearn everything.

(pic by the amazingly talented Tania Blake)

Unlearning the lies about worth and work

For so long, I believed my value was in what I could produce. How much I could carry. How many boxes I could check off. How loud my calendar screamed “this woman is IMPORTANT.”

That was the story I inherited and played out for years. But something is shifting in me…

Since choosing a freedom-first lifestyle, I’ve been peeling away layers of that conditioning. I’m not chasing external validation like I used to. I’m not overworking to prove anything anymore. And the wild part is - I’m more effective, more creative, more myself.

Because now, I give myself permission to rest. To tune into my energy. To follow the natural rhythms of my life instead of forcing myself to perform through it.

I’m still working hard and building awesome stuff. But it’s coming from a completely different place.

I spent almost a month away recently (first in Mexico, then in Hawaii) and something DEEP in me refilled. This wasn’t your typical “vacation”. It was a full nervous system reset.

I came back energized, and clear. And with that clarity came a wave of momentum.

I dropped into get-shit-done mode. I started connecting dots on different facets of my business that I couldn’t see before. I was truly on fire, having brilliant ideas and executing at lightning speed.

And now, here I am on day 10 of my cycle feeling the shift in energy.

I’m not depleted, just aware. Aware that I need structure and that if I want to keep creating in a sustainable way, I need to support myself now—not wait until I’m burned out.

So I’m writing things down and mapping things out and getting myself organized so that I can ride this wave and still maintain momentum.

I’m learning how to work with myself and my neurodivergent brain instead of against it.

Unlearning the lies about success

Here’s another thing I’ve been sitting with:

Success doesn’t look the way I used to think it did. I’m finding myself less and less motivated by external factors (fancy house, nice cars, designer clothes) that I totally chased for a long time. What good is the house and the cars and the clothes if you’re dead inside when you get them? 🙃

My definition of success these days is about being lit up. You know the feeling when you wake up excited and go to bed proud every day? I want more of that!

Success, to me, is about creating things that are aligned and meaningful and impactful for the people I serve.

It’s having time to go for a walk in the middle of the day. It’s having space to breathe between projects and clients. It’s having freedom to design my days intentionally to do more of what I love and less of what I don’t love.

The vision I’m holding for my life doesn’t match what I was taught to want—and that’s been hard to admit.

There’s grief in that too, I guess. Some days I can’t believe how much of myself I gave away to try to reach goals that weren’t actually aligned.

But now, I get to define success on my own terms.

Unlearning the lies about identity

This is the biggest one, I think.

Who am I if I’m no longer the high-achieving, over-functioning, praise-collecting version of myself I’ve always been?

What does it mean to walk away from identities that once made me feel safe?

I’ve been asking those questions a lot lately.

And what I’m realizing is—this isn’t about reinventing myself at all. It’s about remembering myself.

The more time I spend tuning in - moving, writing, reflecting, just being ME - the more I start to hear her.

The real me.

The version that existed before the noise. Before the rules. Before the hustle.

She’s softer.

But stronger. More powerful. More honest.

And every time I listen to her, the world opens up a little more.

Ideas flow. Opportunities align. The right people find me.

It’s like the universe is responding to me and validating that I don’t have to perform anymore. And man does that ever feel good.

Sustainable productivity > high performance

Right now I’m focused on building structure into my days. I’m organizing my to-do list across three different businesses. I’m trying to carve out time to create and time to rest. I’m doing all of this because I want to be healthy (mentally and physically) while I build.

I don’t want to burn bright and then burn out.

I want longevity and most importantly, I want to enjoy the ride.

That’s what this freedom-first life is really about. It’s not the absence of work - it’s the presence of alignment.

And damn, that shit is sacred ✨

If you’re here with me - unlearning, remembering, redefining - just know that:

You’re not behind. You’re not lazy. You’re not lost.

You’re just becoming more you.

And that’s a beautiful thing worth celebrating ❤️

People talk about freedom like it’s the destination.
The goal.
The thing we all chase.

But real freedom isn’t something you get.
It’s something you remember.

And it all starts with a single decision: to choose yourself.

Freedom isn’t the goal. It’s the outcome.

Before you can experience true freedom, you have to face yourself.

Not the curated version of you that shows up on social media.
Not the masked-up version you learned to present in meetings or to your family.
The real you.

This return to the self is a core principle in yogic philosophy. The Yoga Sutras speak of avidya (spiritual ignorance) as the root cause of suffering.
It’s what happens when we mistake our roles, our thoughts, our jobs, our identities for who we are.

The path to liberation begins when we start to see through this illusion. Liberation is only possible when we let go of the rules we’ve internalized but never really questioned, when we unlearn the stories we were told about what we “should” do to be good, successful, worthy. To achieve true liberation, we have to be willing to dismantle the life we’ve built from someone else’s idea of success instead of our own.

In other words; we have to be willing to burn it all down.

This isn’t a self-help soundbite.
This is tapas - the fire of transformation.
It’s uncomfortable. It’s disorienting. It burns.

But on the other side of that fire is truth. And truth is where freedom lives.

The messy middle no one talks about

This is the part the books don’t cover, the programs skip over, the thought leaders conveniently forget to mention.

The in-between.

Where you're not who you used to be, but you're not quite who you're becoming either.

You’ve chosen yourself, but the path ahead isn’t paved yet. And this is where it gets really painful, like you’re walking barefoot through the rubble of your past life. It would be easier to turn around, but you have to keep walking and facing all of the tiny little rocks that are preventing you from getting to your destination.

This is the moment when the dismantling begins.

You can no longer ignore the things that are holding you back, the things that are not in alignment anymore. Your old ways of coping are no longer satisfying. You start noticing that certain friendships drain you. Certain habits numb you. Certain parts of your identity were never really yours to begin with.

In yogic terms, this practice is called svadhyaya (deep self-study). You become the observer of your own life, able to see clearly where you’ve been operating on autopilot.

And my friends, this is where the grief sets in. Yep, grief.

Let’s not sugarcoat it. This work is PAINFUL. There’s grief in every layer you shed.

• Grief for who you were.

• Grief for the life you once thought you wanted.

• Grief for the people you believed would be on the journey with you.

For me, this showed up in ways I didn’t expect…

I left corporate thinking I’d continue the friendships I’d built there, particularly with a few people I was close to. We had history, trust, and what felt like mutual respect.

But after I left, I became invisible. The texts stopped. The offers to help disappeared. The connections I thought would support me in building my business evaporated.

It took me a while to understand why. But now I see it clearly:

When I stopped playing a role within the system,
I became a threat to it.

I’m no longer useful in the ways I was before. I speak openly about power dynamics, broken systems, performative DEI, and the way women in corporate are expected to stay quiet and grateful. I say things that make people uncomfortable, especially the people who are still invested in upholding the systems.

That’s the thing about being visible in your power:
You shine a light on everything others are trying to avoid.

There’s grief in realizing that some of the people who once praised your brilliance only did so because it benefitted them. And when that benefit disappears, so do they.

Embracing the beauty of it all

Within all this grief lies something so beautiful, so special - a coming home. With each identity you shed, you draw closer to your authentic self, remembering who you were before the world imposed its definitions upon you.

You begin to trust your intuition more deeply.
You stop outsourcing your power.
You stop asking for permission.

You start LIVING in the fullest and most beautifully vibrant expression of you.

Freedom isn’t about escaping - it’s about remembering.

In the Yoga Sutras, liberation is known as kaivalya (absolute freedom). Not freedom from responsibility, but freedom from identification with anything that is not your truest self.

And that’s the journey I’m on.
That’s The Freedom Experiment.

I don’t have all the answers.
I’m still dismantling.
Still grieving.
Still rebuilding.

But I know this: I am no longer available for anything or anyone that requires me to shrink or mask or be someone I’m not. And I’m willing to burn it all down because I trust I’ll rise from the ashes more whole.

If you’re here too - in the messy middle of your own dismantling - welcome.

You’re not alone. Let’s walk this path together. ❤️

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I recently had what some might call an awakening. Stick with me, I promise I haven't gone off the deep end.

It happened while I was hiking through Waimea Canyon to Waipo'o Falls in Kuaui with my family. Somewhere along the trail, I felt something shift in me. It wasn’t a conscious thought, more of an intuitive knowing that I needed to let go of something in order to make space for something new.

At the time, I couldn’t quite name it. I just felt it viscerally, like I was waking up to a truth that I'd avoided for a long time and that had been buried under years of capitalist conditioning.

Success, but at what cost?

For the last few years, I’ve been on a path that by most standards looked pretty successful on the outside. I climbed the corporate ladder at lightning speed, most recently getting within arm's reach of the coveted VP title.

On paper, I had everything: a high-profile career, financial security, the fancy house and cars. Truly living the (North) American dream.

But I was... unfulfilled.

I was travelling all the time, constantly stressed and feeling burnt out. As a yoga teacher for over a decade, I knew what I needed to do but every time I slowed down or got on my mat, my intuition would whisper "WTF are you actually doing with your life??!"

Of course I ignored it.

Because the truth was too inconvenient. The truth would mean unraveling everything I had built and was working towards, and I wasn’t ready for that. So I kept pushing forward, blinded by ego and the relentless pursuit of external validation.

Until the decision was made for me.

The layoff that set me free

When I was laid off, I finally had to sit with myself and face the uncomfortable truths I’d been avoiding for far too long.

And deep down, I knew I could never go back.

The linear path - climbing the ladder, chasing the next title, sacrificing my well-being for a seat at the table - it wasn’t for me anymore. I had been living out of alignment with my values for so long I didn't recognize myself anymore.

I had to create a new way forward, one that honoured my intuition, my purpose, and MY definition of success.

So I took the leap into entrepreneurship.

Alignment > Everything

I built my consulting and advisory business with one goal in mind: to create a life that truly reflects my values.

Freedom. Flexibility. Purpose. Impact.

And the moment I stopped forcing, everything started flowing.

Clients came to me without hard selling. Opportunities opened up effortlessly. And in less than 6 months, I've matched the monthly income I was earning as a SENIOR DIRECTOR in corporate, while working half the time.

Now I get to work with clients I love, doing work that feels deeply meaningful, and living a life that feels fully mine. I start my days slow, I never skip my movement practice, I take long walks with my dog, I travel when I want... and I still get shit done and bring home the bacon.

This is what happens when you live in alignment.

Shedding the old to make space for the new

That moment in Kauai, and the conversations that followed with my family, have helped me realize that it's time to fully release the version of me that built a life based on societal expectations. The version of me that measured success in titles and the size of my house. The version of me that ignored intuition in favour of external validation.

That version got me here. But she is not who I am anymore.

As I step into this next chapter, I feel called to share more of my journey - openly, honestly, and without needing to adhere to a specific format to appease the LinkedIn or Instagram algo gods.

All I know is that I want to show what’s possible when you stop chasing someone else’s definition of success and start redefining it on your own terms.

This is The Freedom Experiment.
A living, breathing reflection on what it really means to reclaim your time, your energy, your voice, your self.

If you’re walking this path too - unlearning, rising, rebuilding - I’d love to have you with me. Subscribe and let’s do this out loud, together.