My journey to awakening into higher-consciousness began August 15, 2007….

My Story

On August 15, 2007 my sister and brother-in-law were killed in a car accident…that phone call at 4:30 in the morning changed everything!

“Stephanie…it’s mom…the worst thing has happened…Kelly and Ron have been killed in a car accident.” It indeed was the worst thing that has ever happened in my life…up until that point, that is. I can say this now because of all the processing and healing work that I have done…as “bad” as it was to lose my baby sister it was also the greatest gift that she gave me. It was my “wake up call”……her death was so traumatic…so painful to me that it literally “snapped” me out of the unconscious life I had been living up until that point. Of course I truly thought I was conscious…I would tell people of course I am conscious. But I truly did not know what it meant to be conscious…to live consciously.

After Kelly was killed I became conscious of everything in my life! I remember watching the movie “Enough” with Jennifer Lopez who marries a man who is physically abusive to her…”I yell at the TV just leave him”! It took me some time but I too realized I was in an abusive relationship, except no one could see my black eye and bloody lip…because they were on the inside. The deep seeded verbal and emotional abuse that I endured daily was normal to me and this is why I thought that way. As a child I was raised by a raging alcoholic father, who also worked as a police officer (if he only knew his own awesomeness, he would have never had made such poor choices; I thought he was awesome…I looked up to him with such pride, but it did not matter what I thought…he just couldn’t believe it for himself) and a mother who felt so unworthy herself it created an environment that instilled deep roots of unworthiness, “not good enough”, not smart enough, not pretty enough….so on and so on. My process for healing myself took me on a path that helped the puzzle pieces come together and I began to understand why the life I dreamed of having was not mine…yet;) work in progress-keep checking in as I work towards completing my website!

Education/Experience

*Masters in Spiritual Psychology with an emphasis in Consciousness, Health, and Healing from the University of Santa Monica located in Santa Monica, California.

*Volunteer Grief Facilitator for about 6-years for the teen group at “A Place for Kids” at the Mission Viejo Hospital.

Education/Experience

*Graduate of the Trauma Intervention Program (TIP) in Orange County, CA.

*Spiritual & Psychological First Aid Certificate

Law Enforcement background

My father worked as a police officer and an investigator for Laguna Beach Police Department located in Laguna Beach, California. My twin brother and I both worked as Federal Agents; he worked for the FBI and I worked for NOAA as a wildlife agent. My career in law enforcement was short lived as one-month into the training I received the call that my sister had been killed in a car accident. I was able to finish my training and work several years but it did not feel the same…it became clear that this was not the “dream” job I thought it would be.

My intention in putting this section on my website is not to tell my “story” but to tell the story of all the men and women who came before me and who will and have come after me…law enforcement has always been a career predominantly filled with men and a belief system that “showing any kind of emotion” is a sign of “weakness”…especially the emotion of sadness, tears, crying. The harassment and razzing of officers that show emotion because they lost a loved one to death or they went on a “call” and they see a gruesome scene of a father who murdered his entire family….it makes me angry at the ignorance that has been running ramped.

The first thing I learned in processing my grief was this, if I did not process my feelings, my emotions now, I would develop down the line an extremely poor habit like drinking, drugs, anything I could do to numb myself of the emotions that are wanting to be acknowledged and heard. I did not want to live my life like that. I get it, being a woman is different for a man in law enforcement because there is this misunderstanding that men are to be “strong” bla bla bla…but the truth is strength comes from having the courage to express ones emotions in a healthy way…that is real strength. When we stuff our feelings and emotions down and don’t allow them to express what we are creating is a ticking time bomb in addition to incredibly stress in the body which creates all kinds of diseases in the body.

It takes incredible courage in the face of adversity to go against the collective unconscious (law enforcement agencies) and say, “it is okay to cry, it is okay for me to show emotion; it is okay not to be superman, it is okay that I am not perfect.” Because the truth is I love myself enough! to heal; I choose healthy ways of expressing my grief; “I show my children what a strong man looks like!”