Leo and I started a family, and I left nursing to stay home with our kids: West, Logan, and Lily. My career changed from caring for the sick, to caring for my children. While I enjoyed this, as they got older and went off to school, I felt a desire to go back to nursing. But how in the world was I going to handle 12-hour shifts again? I wasn’t. I desired a flexible nursing role that wouldn’t detract from being a mom.

Even though I began to explore the next step in my career, I was still a busy mom and life was stressful. One day, I was making a cake for my daughter, snagged a taste of the frosting, and my tongue went numb! I began to feel very strange and gave up on the cake. It didn’t take long before most of my face was completely numb and I was in full panic mode, my medical background told me this kind of physical reaction was serious. My mind was racing. Soon I would hear my doctor telling me the unfortunate news – I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis (MS), a chronic disease affecting the central nervous system (the brain and spinal cord).

My first reaction was “Give me the wheelchair now!”

I was freaking out.

Was my plan of finding that dream nursing job hopeless? Could I even have a career again? It took me a long time to calm down and allow myself to adapt and accept my diagnosis. I wasn’t falling apart. I could do this.

My doctors would say “Don’t be stressed,” and I was like “Ok, how do I do that?” They didn’t have an answer for me, so I had to find it for myself. I began learning about holistic modalities and started practicing meditation and mindfulness exercises to relieve my stress and alleviate the MS flare ups. In time, I wasn’t getting worse and worse, in fact, I found my MS to be manageable.

I felt inspired by my results that I took a huge leap of faith and began a program to become a certified Holistic Nurse. This program focused on the shift from traditional medical care education to a focus on preventative measures of wellness and mindfulness. We learned about how to take care of people before they became ill.

The program featured a guest speaker, Linda Bark, owner of a coaching academy called Wisdom of the Whole. Listening to Linda speak about holistic coaching sparked a connection in me to what I love most in life— being there for people, to encourage and empower them as they learn how to resolve their issues. I could see myself in this role!

I have always been a caring person— it is who I am—but the way I have cared for people has developed over time. I like to fill my own home with elephants now. Seeing them reminds me of my nana and how all of this started. When my kids move the different elephants, I think about how poetic it is, that sometimes we need someone’s help to direct us on our own New Pathway.