About Carol
This is the story of how I discovered my inner joy and found my purpose and the challenges I had to overcome to find them.
Live In Joy & Purpose!
I almost died three times – at ages 5, 28, and 48 and those close calls shaped the person and coach I am today.
The thing I learned about almost dying and surviving is how much I want to live. And not just live!
THRIVE, SOAR and LOVE!!
And if getting hit by a car at age 5 and almost dying wasn’t enough, to challenge me, my mother died when I was 7, and at 9 my father remarried a woman, who didn’t want me around. To make matters worse my father was physically and emotionally abusive to me.
How did I overcome those challenges and become a goddess and not a victim? How did I learn to love? How did I find my destiny?
I, like everyone, am blessed with a huge heart. And I always had a sense that I had come here to make a difference.
That desire to make a difference began more than 30 years ago when I graduated from the University of Maryland with a degree in Sociology, specializing in Criminology with a minor in Psychology. The rehabilitation of women within the prison system was my training and life’s goal. While working at Maryland’s Jessup State Penitentiary for women, I received a severe dose of reality: I discovered it was all about incarceration – not rehabilitation.
When I realized my contribution would not be working in prison, I left and worked at a variety of service-related jobs.
It was during this time that I made the first of two significant life-altering commitments that would positively impact my life.
The first commitment was to my health and physical well-being. (A commitment that I still honor today for myself and use to guide my clients to be healthier and more fit.)
Still searching and in need of a change, at age 25 I bought a Pan Am ticket and took off, by myself, on a trip around the world. What an amazing adventure!! The incredible experiences, the wonderful people I met, the beautiful and mysterious places I visited, changed my entire outlook on life and people. I went from being cynical and guarded, to open and more trusting.
When I returned from my trip, I moved to San Francisco to try again to make a contribution and a difference. I became a fitness trainer and eventually a sales manager. And for the next 20 years, I worked as a successful salesperson, manager and sales trainer.
During those 20 years I made the second significant, life-altering commitment to myself, and that was to my spiritual growth. I began to study to learn to be conscious, to love, to forgive, and to be compassionate. (Spirituality is still my number one value and I combine the practical with the spiritual in my coaching for the sake of my clients’ consciousness and growth.)
As I continued to work on myself, I still knew something was missing from my life. I had a wonderful, kind, evolved, loving husband; incredible friends; and restored family relationships. Yet I still hadn’t found my life’s purpose work.
Even with all the work I had done on myself, I still had a core belief – a critical voice, that said I was an unworthy, unlovable human being. I didn’t love myself. I would look in the mirror and sob because I thought I was so ugly. No one knew this, because I always acted upbeat and confident.
And then at 48, I became seriously ill and had to become quiet; and in that quiet, I found the truth. I wasn’t an unworthy human being. I was lovable.
And when I finally let the truth in, the answer I had been looking for came to me. I discovered what I was supposed to do with my life and how I could give back and make a difference.
I found life coaching. I studied at Coaches Training Institute in San Rafael, CA, an institute that specializes in the co-active model of coaching and the intuitive approach to life coaching. With the initial classroom training, and an intensive certification program, I knew I was finally HOME.
I’m a Certified Life Coach through the Coaches Training Institute, which is accredited by the International Coach Federation.
I am so honored to be making a contribution to people’s lives and humbled to have finally found my life purpose and to have evolved, loving, joyful, intimate relationships beyond what I could have ever imagined. It was a long, deeply rewarding, sometimes difficult, fascinating journey. Thank God I took it. And thank God for the incredible people who walked the path with me.
If I can find love, fulfillment, joy and my purpose,
so can you.
To learn more about how coaching with me works, please go to the Coach With Me section where I’ll share details about who and how I coach, and why coaching works.