A Year In Review: Turning Baggage Into Fuel

Somehow on November 5th of 2024, I just shut down.

I kept up with my personal status quo, but I was just turned off. Shuttered almost entirely emotionally, and I resented anything that made this fog and discomfort worse. While continuing to build the method, I slowly made my way back to comfort + emotional eating and inconsistency with my body practice.

As many would say, I let myself go.

But does that make me an inadequate coach? Unworthy of being a leader at the helm of a method built to support compassionate lifestyle design for others? The results didn’t reveal themselves until November 5th of 2025. The answer? I am the best coach for the job. And this last year of life made that even more true.

What happened last year?

It can be a hard conversation to have. Basically, I watched what I believed would happen in my home country happen in real time. A vitriolic, unstable, damning, and hateful set of leadership was reinstalled, and it was clear it would be worse than the first time. For days, I couldn’t speak much, had almost no energy, and stopped at nothing to seek as much information as I could to understand just how horribly this could all go for months.

Within weeks, I had shed some of the pain from the reality that otherism was about to metastasize, but it was hard to separate myself from what was happening and what was to come. Even thousands of miles away, as an expat in another beautiful country. Somehow, I felt simultaneously happy and guilty about my new life here.

I was glued to political commentary, which some days made me hopeful and others filled with rage. I had just finished a juice cleanse (my last for sure), but things were good. I felt good. Then I purged all of this wellness and traded it in for meat alternatives, fatty snacks, late-night popcorn with extra olive oil, and my waist began to resemble my turbulent feelings more and more.

With time, it became clear that what I anticipated would happen up there would be worse than I’d thought. Fully informed and prepped with all the information, the immediate degradation of law, pardoning of criminals, and the militarization of our streets still came as a total shock to the system, and so I ate even more.

All while I was reshaping the method, periodically returning to my values, and then allowing another cheat day to turn into a week, then a month. I’d gone from anything is possible in my new home to straddling the fence. Doom and gloom, but also hope and renewed energy. Even if it was coming from an erratic, dysregulated space.

On top of coping with the reality revealing itself back in the states and abroad sociopolitically, I was also experiencing the next phase of growing pains at home. Learning to live in our new country, navigating the very real parts of ourselves that don’t always align, and finding peace in truth vs. performance added to the mix. House upkeep, insane insect attacks, floods, and power outages. Gratitude didn’t escape me, but as a true HSP and empath, the overwhelm at times was real. And there was no combating this until I stripped it all away for a while and said, I am only doing the basics, focusing on what I am building, and letting myself off the hook for a while. And that’s when the coach in me returned. To be there for me.

It took some time, but it revealed the method to me as it should be, not where it started in 2022. Not in the fully raw design that I fell out of love with, but back to the best year of my life (before losing my mother) in 2015. When I was WFPB, high-carb, low-fat, and thriving.

When I started playing with this rhythm again, I saw immediate results. But I was still wiping away the residue of cultural grief and flexing new psychological muscles on the home front. Ultimately, I scrapped a lot of what I had newly built in exchange for what I already knew worked best that escaped me in another wave of grief in 2016. I have been plant-based for nearly 23 years now. And through some universal and personal trauma, my passion deepened, the method became clearer, and now I am reapplying it to myself.

How is it that turmoil can sometimes be the polish that offers the final shine to what we’ve worked on for years? It won't be the same for everyone, but I do know that this last year of my life has made me a better coach because I had to walk myself through every imaginable touchpoint of a client. Apathy, passion depletion, dysregulation, fear, injuries, and more. Sometimes, I rallied and conquered; other times, I chose to indulge instead of pushing harder. This would add even more layers to the method that make it more sustainable, livable. Because it's not prescriptive, it's rhythmic.

As I looked out into the wellness space, no one was talking about what the world was experiencing. Just their programs, meetups. As many suffered, the expected fills of the grid showed up every day, and I finally threw my hands up and said, “I’m starting over.” Gutted socials, took a long pause, and chose a scratch, fully organic return to building community with those who weren't already around.

So here we are on November 11, 2025, and I am on my way to what I call the Dawning Day on November 14th. A day when method followers start over by saying goodbye to old haunts in a non-judgemental way felt so important. I am eating whatever I want while still staying close to the method’s rhythm in the meantime.

We saw a hopeful result in the states a few nights ago, and somehow this training camp of life started to remind me once again that, like any other person, we are all capable of losing our way. But it makes finding it again so much sweeter.

I look forward to sharing my personal experiences, getting back to form, to myself, navigating and celebrating the holidays, finally traveling to see family after months of fear, and staying true to the method day in and day out. Because what I built is the lifestyle I want and believe in. And it’s the one I am certain will insulate myself and others from future pitfalls.

Please join me. I’ve got so much to share with you.

Now I get to show you why this really works. I won’t be relying on evidence that I’ve been the perfect specimen for years to create trust. In just over 90 days, you’ll see what trusting in a method that works can do for you.

I’m doing this for more than myself. Because I can’t wait to meet those of you who are motivated by my experience to join this community and work with me. Not because I am perfect on Instagram, but because I am a real, compassionate, and empathetic coach that isn’t afraid to get real and do the work that we all must do to reveal our best selves.