Finding My Voice and Stepping into my Storyteller Archetype: My 2021 Year in Review
It’s been a year of change. I can’t believe how much has happened in the past year. I found my voice, stepped into my storyteller archetype, and learned that living life is about finding your way to live it on your terms.
Here are some highlights and milestones from this year that helped me grow!
Enrolled in Functional Diagnostic Nutrition
My husband is a health coach. By living with him, eating the food he makes, and adjusting my lifestyle, I lost about 60 pounds in 2020.
Yet, as is natural in a relationship, the rose-colored glasses eventually come off, and I got tired of him telling me what to do.
I decided to educate myself and enrolled in Functional Diagnostic Nutrition (FDN), where we learn to look at the body’s overall function and not isolated symptoms.
I learned the body is a complex ecosystem, so another will compensate when one area is out of balance. When we chase symptoms, we’re not looking at the whole picture.
I’m grateful that I went through a practical journey of health first, which was then boosted by theory later. I realized nothing beats experience.
In FDN, we run lab tests on our clients so that we’re looking at the body’s function as a whole. We have a common saying, “Test, don’t guess!”
Met with a Goddess (i.e., Worked with a Health Coach)
Even though I started learning all of this fantastic content, I had some emotional baggage I carried. I had a hard time speaking up for myself. I felt angry and stressed a lot of the time.
I started working with Nicole DeVaney, a holistic medicine practitioner. She taught me so much about health and practices to advocate for yourself and how to rid yourself of limiting beliefs.
Without Nicole, I wouldn’t be where I am now. I see her as the goddess on my hero’s journey. She gave me the tools I needed to succeed and step into my higher self.
Started a Podcast
This summer, after doing some work to find my voice, I decided I’d try out starting a podcast!
It started as a way for me to reconnect with friends and acquaintances and learn more about what they actually do for work and in their day-to-day lives.
I’ve now expanded it to my network’s network and beyond.
My hope is that in this time of isolation and division, we remember that we have more in common than we have different.
Check out my teaser trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYhZTzHyUj4
Got Promoted!
Somewhere along the line of doing this work, I ended up getting promoted!
What’s funny is that I got promoted when I started feeling like I was doing less work. I’m not saying at all that I started slacking off, but I started working smarter not harder.
I slowed down and reflected on the activities I’d been spending so much time on and realized I could invest my time more wisely.
Studied Holistic Lifestyle Coaching
After going through Functional Diagnostic Nutrition, I was hungry to learn more. I enrolled in the Chek Institute’s Holistic Lifestyle Coaching Level 1 and Level 2 courses.
There’s definitely overlap between the two programs, but what I love about the holistic lifestyle coaching courses is that you learn about the importance of a healthy mind and spirit along with a healthy body.
I loved learning about that because I’d seen it firsthand. At the beginning of the year, I was the healthiest I’d ever been in my life. But I was dealing with some serious internal trauma that was holding me back.
I recommend the holistic lifestyle coaching courses to anyone who wants to heal their own body, mind, and spirit.
As the founder of the institute says, “You can’t share it if you don’t wear it.”
If you aren’t healthy, how can you tell other people to be healthy?
Identified my Core Values
While visiting Nicole for some in-person work, I met Dawni Angel. An entrepreneur coach, Dawni helps her clients identify their core values. As she says, your core values live in your bones.
As Dawni defines them on her website, core values are what you have valued since you were a small child, and that you will continue to hold dear until you die. These are the things that run your life consciously and unconsciously. They are so deep that they have become part of you.
Even though “core values” is a common enough term, I didn’t realize how much they ran my life. Once I had a coaching session with Dawni, I understood my core values and started using them as a guiding light to make decisions.
My core values are autonomy, growth, and creativity. When I don’t have autonomy, my growth is stunted. When I’m not growing, I have no inspiration to be creative.
Completed a Writer’s Retreat
Right before Thanksgiving, I went to a writer’s retreat near Salt Lake City, Utah. I highly recommend this particular retreat by Bridget Cook-Burch and the Your Inspired Story team!
It was wonderful to get away and be in the mountains. I learned a lot about best practices for writing and the publishing industry. I made a lot of good connections.
For those who love experiential learning, this retreat does not disappoint. We had several “Write Juicy” sessions where we used our different senses to write about our experiences.
The culmination of the retreat was writing about the biggest obstacle we’ve ever had to face in our lives. And then read it to a group of people. Mine made me particularly nervous to write about because I thought I might get shunned by the group later.
After I read mine, Bridget got up and gave me a hug, just like she’d given a hug to everyone else who’d read theirs. I started to cry. I said, “I was afraid you wouldn’t want to hug me or be near me after reading mine.” She just hugged me tighter, said some kind, affirming words, and waved everyone else over.
I went from being afraid of being shunned to being enveloped in a huge group hug.
A lot of people came up to me afterward and told me how much my story moved them. They encouraged me to share it online. So I did.
After doing so, I felt this huge weight come off of my shoulders. I wasn’t hiding anymore.
Launched My Blog
I’m particularly excited to announce that I’ve launched my own personal blog! I’m going to be moving my posts away from Medium in the future and putting everything on my own blog.
I named my blog, Renaissance Rachel, because I identify strongly with the term “renaissance man” (or woman!). I have broad interests and a few different specializations.
I plan to write about UX, research, writing holistic health, and see where that takes me!
To subscribe to my blog, fill out this form.
Thanks for reading!
