How did I get here

Have you ever asked that question?

I walk into the home of a 36 year old widow (with 5 children) and open my station. I setup the kitchen sink with my traveling shampoo bowl while hearing complex conversations between grandparents and little ones. Her phone rings as I’m unpacking my shears and plugging in my curling irons. I can feel the heaviness in her voice as she answers a call from the funeral director: “who will be claiming his urn?” There she sits, in the same spot where she once guided her husband into glory… facing a world that no longer holds him.

I look out on her property and see some of her children jumping on the trampoline while the others stayed close to her. I see a house in need of functioning and a property in need of maintenance. I see children in need of holding and a funeral in need of arranging. My heart breaks for her. I place the cape around her neck and for a second she stills, settling into a moment of comfort.

I offer the only thing words and reason can’t: Can I wash your hair?

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How did I get here?

I went to beauty school with the thought of becoming a platform artist gaining experience on stages but what I received is more honorable than that. I received a gift that connects me to women in their most raw moments. A safe space to be nurtured without input or explanation as I shave a lady’s head during chemo treatments, listen as another replays her mother’s absence, cry as one mourns the pain of her child’s addiction….

I sat in the hard with women for over 17 years with a simple catalyst: Can I wash your hair?

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Beyond the chair I continued to sit with women, in the gym, on retreats, on calls & in groups and I noticed a theme inside each of us: the need for nurture.

We are the nurturers, the comforters, the consolers. Over time we lose this primary need for ourselves as responsibilities and obligations take root. We wait for relief that never comes and the escape is a primal revolt: bitterness, doom scrolling, resentful thinking, over eating, vanity, excessive drinking, shopping, gossiping, snarkiness, fantasy novels, the list goes on…

What if the relief we’re waiting on is disguised as the need to be nurtured?

What if harnessing her was the welcome mat to this relief?

Underneath all the counterfeit escapes lies the need to be nurtured.

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I know this need because it was one I discovered after my revolt.  After 17 years in the hair industry, 6 in fitness, 4 in coaching and 3 years in the retreat industry… I closed the door to it all.

How did I get here?

I was burnt out, fried, frustrated, disconnected from myself, those closest to me, and far away from the very gift that led me to all of these blessings.  It was clear I had a growing need I was unable to touch and a deep absence inside myself.

In this gap, I stopped blaming and escaping. I gave the old me, the old work, the old approach, the only me I ever knew and let it die in the hands of The Living God.

In 2023 I went off grid.

Like way off grid.

My husband and I got pregnant, I birthed a baby on my bedroom floor, nursed him for a year, learned to make sourdough, began serving at church, hung with my preteen, deleted socials, talked less, observed more, stopped interacting on platforms, gave up speaking gigs, and spent 5 days in a cave of total darkness amongst the Cascade-Siskiyou Wilderness of Southern Oregon.

During that time of removal I was lost with no vices or habits to rely on.

I was learning an entirely new way and it didn’t come easy. It quite literally tore the old me up, burned away the past and tenderly began to form who I have been longing to be.

How did I get here?

By being reintroduced to nurture.

The need of her, the gift or her and the spreading of her. Regardless of if you know her or not she lives inside of us all. She isn’t an external being but an internal one who knows our need and how to help. She isn’t a passive voice but one who is gentle and discerning in direction.

She picked me up when I didn’t want to drop habits or let go of people who were no longer good for me. She sat with me as I learned to move into a deeper intimacy within myself by forgiving myself and no longer neglecting things within myself. She showed me a purity within that I thought was unrecoverable. Nurture became the gift behind navigating my current life and all that lay before me. Since finding her, harnessing her and reclaiming her, it has become my ultimate focus to spread her back to the feminine… kinda like asking:

Can I wash your hair?

This August, I am leading 3 women into the high desert of Cave Creek, Arizona to slow down and lean into a soul renewal. Much is in store for us as we hike parched land to a nearby waterfall, commune in fellowship around our pool & fire-pit, gather in Jesus’ name expecting to hear a Word from the Holy Spirit, prepare evening meals together and head to a live bull riding event for a taste of the west!

What may feel like a closed chapter is actually the perfect ground for a renewed one. That absence makes room for God’s will to enter, leading us gently toward a side of ourselves we’ve always longed to find. May we learn to see the space not as a void to busy ourselves in, but as room for Him to move as Jesus asks us something simple: Can I wash your feet?

Dear woman, maybe you need to hear this from someone who gets it. I see you in the hard. I see you. Don’t give up. You’re doing a great job 🫶🏼

If the Cave Creek Soul Renewal Retreat is something you feel called to join I have one spot remaining, let’s hop on a call and see if the desert is calling you.