The beginning was rough, but I made sure I was tougher. I got through it and somehow found my way through the next few decades to where I stand as I write this in November of 2025. As I reflect on these past decades of my life, I can clearly see that my leadership and self-awareness have both been at odds with my ego, which has always been led by fear. Today, I stand by the notion that “The Challenged Are The Chosen.” I have created a great path: survive, conquer, and repeat. It looks pretty good on paper.
After nearly two decades as a professional athlete, I’ve been praised for my fitness knowledge and my professional titles, including Miss National Fitness and 2x Miss Fitness Arizona, along with 2 Southwestern Regional Runner-Up positions and another 24 Top 5 placings across State, Regional, and National Competition Stages. Being an athlete was challenging, but I never saw it as hard. Motherhood was the toughest role I have had to navigate. Becoming a single mother by my third child was my role of strength in life, and while I did my best, I also knew where my weaknesses were, and unfortunately, my children were the only ones who saw and paid for that firsthand. The motherhood part was easy compared to coping with the failures. The guilt can be overwhelming. I am still a work in progress there.
Giving up control over my kids’ lives has been hard because I thought I could control their safety, their self-love, who they choose to be around, how they tackle the days, what they go after, etc. What a humbling realization—to think I believed I had control of it. They are adults now, so none of that is my place. It is their role and right to control their own destiny. I had my chance to help with that, and what I am learning now is how much they have to unlearn because of what they learned from me. They were actually here to teach me, and I failed that. The fact is, the mission intended for my role as their mother was to surrender to the process (I will share more about that), rather than “controlling” my kids.
Nonetheless, on a public level, you could say that my name, image, and a somewhat, but not widely known, personal brand have become synonymous with strength. Here’s the thing, though, I feel more connected than I used to, and that connection is what keeps me honest. I believe we are always seeing projections, wisdom, trauma, rage, love, whatever we haven’t metabolized yet.
Given the environment I grew up in, my brain became wired exclusively for survival, not safety. Repeated exposure to fear, unpredictability, and abuse kept my amygdala—the brain’s threat detection center—constantly activated, keeping me hypervigilant and reactive—even if I was not in danger. At the same time, the orbital frontal cortex—the region responsible for safety, trust, emotional regulation, and higher-order reasoning—wasn’t consistently developed through nurturing or stability, so it didn’t have the same opportunity to strengthen. As a result, much of my early logic, decision-making, and sense of reality were shaped through an amygdala-driven lens of fear and survival rather than grounded safety and clarity.
