How My 25,000-Piece Puzzle Got Me Ready For You
If you had asked me even a week ago if this blog post would have existed, I would have laughed in your face. Not once have I thought about blogging but here I am building my dream business and I will do what it takes to grow and connect with my audience.
Who am I?
Well, like the rest of you I am many things. First things first, I am Sally. I’ve been in western medicine for 20 years. I‘ve been hiding my alternative health side for most of the last 10 years here in the Calgary area, even though I have more formal university training in Holistic Health. The openness wasn’t the same, so I tucked it away and only allowed a few special people to know. Here is something interesting…
As I started opening up more about it, other people started showing their interests too! I see you western medicine people who know there is a place for both! These two pieces of the medical world go hand in hand when you have an open mind and heart. I won’t get into all the peer-reviewed studies and how North America is lagging in integration.
I love to travel and try new things, cook, take way too many pictures of pets, go camping (more like glamping, in a trailer with a shower…), sit around a fire, go to drum circles, connect and talk about and experience all things spiritual.
My husband, Cameron, and I started traveling in 2013 for our honeymoon. We chose a Mediterranean cruise, total bliss…ahhh. We set the bar high and now it’s hard not to travel in such luxury. We visited Rome, Venice, Naples, Amalfi Coast, Malta, Santorini, Ephesus, Turkey, I forget where else but I’m sure Cam will remind me when he reads this.
Since then, we have traveled to Alaska, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, and Mexico. I tell people this is part of my mental health. I want need to experience new places and cultures. We always buy a Christmas ornament and a piece of art on our trip as memory joggers. We are hoping to get to South America, Iceland, the UK, Norway, Sweden, and Belgium. I really want to go to Egypt, but Cam doesn’t so I’ll have to find someone to go with. Does anybody want to go with me? Can you imagine going to a retreat there? I can. I’ll work on it.
Speaking of too many pictures of animals. Meet Jack. He is almost 5 years old. He is 9lbs in the winter when his hair is long and drops back down to 8 when he gets a haircut. He is a Pomshi-Pomeranian and Shih Tzu. He saved me. I was so lonely and was having trouble making friends when I was a clinic manager in Calgary. I wasn’t supposed to be friends with people I worked with as a manager. I didn’t have much going on in Airdrie at the time that wasn’t kid-related. How on earth do you meet people?
I was lonely. Cam took a job that included shift work, 12 hour nights, I was struggling with the kids getting older and being independent and I was trying to figure out who I was again as a person. So, I picked out and named Jack before I even told Cam we were getting a dog. He’d said ‘no’ for years. Cam likes cats.
Cam and Jack are pretty tight. It’s hard not to completely fall in love with a soul that is so excited to see you when you walk through the door. (Cam doesn’t greet me like that!) Cam had never had a dog before. Steep learning curve. Jack is so worth it. So now, when ‘dad’ is at work through the night, Jack is at work too, keeping me company. Also, Jack loves Reiki so when it is quiet, I try to make sure he is getting some.
How can my expertise help you?
Now that you know a little bit more about me, how can I help you with your life? Let’s cover the boring stuff first and get all my training out of the way and then we will dig deep into how all this plays into who I am and what I do and how that will benefit you.
In 2002, I trained as a nursing attendant and began to connect and be an integral part of thousands of patients' western medicine journeys. Here it was mostly a physical focus. We touched on some mental health but 20 years ago, it wasn’t talked about like it is now. We NEVER touched on spiritual health unless someone was dying, and social health? Go see a social worker-cue every parent imagining their kids being ripped from their homes.
In 2009, I graduated as a Holistic Health Practitioner from McEwan University. Holistic Health Practitioners, while frustrated that they were being discounted, supported western medicine and what was being done well. My two worlds had finally collided! Everything in my being knew there was a place for both to work together. Family doctors that I worked with sent patients and their loved ones to me when they didn't know what else to do. Patients were experiencing relief, but something wasn't quite right for me to make a life for my two young kids, 10 and 7 years old, as a single mom. I am sure that at some point you have all understood how that feels.
My kids were my world. In university, I’d get up at 3 or 4 in the morning to do my homework so I could spend time with them during the day. I was feeling like a horrible mom taking 5 classes and working almost full-time.
Kyler is 23 now and has been in the military for 4 years. He LOVES cars. On more than one occasion, we’d go camping for the weekend and come back to a new vehicle in our small driveway with no engine. Now, where do we put the trailer?
Katryna is 20 and she is finding her way. It looks like social work is her path. She has some big dreams and has always been a philanthropist. It’s fun to watch them learn and grow into functioning, upstanding humans. Turns out, beating myself up for being a terrible mother wasn’t necessary.
MY HEALING JOURNEY IS ALLOWING ME TO HELP WITH YOURS
In hindsight, I had a great deal of healing, learning, and growth to do before I was ready to help others heal as a Holistic Health Practitioner. Sam, who helps me learn about blogging (another one of my reinventions), asked me to add something in here about what I’ve done to be ready and how I knew I needed to heal. I had a lot of trauma to work through. I experienced domestic violence and needed to come to terms with things in my childhood and how I saw myself as a mother. I may talk about it in the future. I don’t know if I am ready to expose those skeletons. Right now, we live in peace together.
All I can think of when asked what I have done is a 25,000-piece puzzle of healing I have been working on for my entire life. I have done acupuncture, reiki, singing bowls, massages, therapy-LOTS of therapy, meditation, seen my family doctor, been on medication, chiropractic care, travel, camp, went to retreats, sat with my feet in freezing cold streams because I heard the water was good for releasing (it is, but it doesn’t need to be painful), went on floats, done puzzles, gotten a dog, you name it, I’ve tried it. Each experience revealed a new, healthier, brighter puzzle piece to put together everything I needed to be ready to work with you.
Here I am, as ready as I'll ever be, taking another leap of faith and finally ready to share myself with the world.
I will continue to grow, learn, and heal, just as I support you to do the same.
We are always changing, growing, learning, and reinventing ourselves with new experiences, new skills, new people, new risks, new rewards, new dreams, new challenges, new successes, new heartache, new love, new aloneness, new criticism, new acceptance.
It's part of the human experience.
I bring you my knowledge and experience from both western medicine and alternative health in every session that we complete together.
I use intuition, Akashic Records, Reiki, acupressure, reflexology, herbology, and our connection to guide you through an insightful, exploratory, personalized healing journey curated, in the moment, just for you.
I am constantly reinventing myself and my life. Now I am finally helping others to reinvent themselves in a way that they didn’t think was possible!
No more waiting.
No more questioning your worth.
Now is the time to take control of your healing, your life, and your vision.
Let me guide you during our healing session and begin the journey to revitalized love for yourself.
By the time you read this, I will have REINVENTED myself again so stay tuned,
Sally