📝 A PERSONAL NOTE

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After completing my holistic health studies in New York, I launched my health coaching practice and founded Pure-E, a raw, organic green drink delivery company that began to change people’s lives. At the time, I was still transitioning out of a 30-year career as a hairdresser, supporting myself and my son while slowly stepping into the work I loved most... spiritually based, holistic health counseling.

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That transition was interrupted abruptly.

In a single, shocking moment, my career, independence, and sense of stability came to a halt. During an ordinary day at work, I experienced sudden, unbearable burning pain running down my arm, caused by severe cervical spinal stenosis, which compromised the nerves in my neck and arm. What followed was a series of medical interventions and a series of surgeries that left me incapacitated on and off for numerous years, and dependent on others.

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This period became an unexpected initiation, one that taught me surrender, humility, and the difficult practice  of being on the receiving end of the kind of care I gave so generously to others. It was surprisingly difficult, until one of my dearest friends said, "giving is the greatest gift in the world. And you are a great giver. If you don't  learn to receive then you deprive others of the greatest gift in the world." That concept changed my life and my relationship to giving and receiving. However, the pain and stress flared a severe fibromyalgia episode that I had previously put into remission, intensifying my experience of pain and fatigue.

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⚠️ The Long Road Back

After a major surgery on my spine through the back of my neck, and four months of rehab, further spinal damage required another major surgery, a three-level cervical fusion, followed by yet another surgical repair to my shoulder. Recovery was long and demanding, filled with physical limitations that challenged my identity, patience, and sense of agency in profound ways. All this was happening as I was raising a teenage son and preparing him to graduate  high school and get to college. I built a website with one hand, I woke at four in the morning to do cold call sales jobs, to the east coast to earn money that didn't require my body. I sold all my valuables, belongings and car, walked my son to the bus stop and directed him to make his lunches while I assisted with one hand. 

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Through it all, I learned something essential: how deeply our sense of self is tied to our bodies, how vulnerable we become when that relationship is disrupted and how to build an interdependent life with others when independence is revered.

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🕊Turning Pain Into Wisdom

As I was healing from these surgeries, I developed shingles, more painful than you may have heard, added another painful chapter layered onto an already long recovery. Having experienced the toll of opioid medications and withdrawals, I chose a different path this time, enduring shingles without them. In hindsight, I would have taken them.)

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There were moments when I felt flattened by life, beaten up, exhausted, discouraged, and afraid to rise again. But in the quiet, difficult nights, something else emerged... perspective. I used that time to reflect, to grieve, to rebuild, and ultimately to alchemize my pain into wisdom.

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That process reshaped how I work with others.

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😢Loss, Grief, and Caregiving

Years later, during the isolation of the pandemic, I faced another medical challenge involving brain surgery on a walnut sized cyst that had been causing me nerve pain in my face and head. This followed a cascade of personal losses, including the deaths of my father, brother, Uncle, cousin, friends, clients and many loved ones over a short span of time.

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Soon after, my partner and I relocated to Oregon to be closer to my son, who lives with schizoaffective disorder, so I could better support him. Rear ended three times and physically debilitated again, I wondered about karma and all these blows to my neck and skull, (I wondered, did I decapitate people in another life?) I decided not to ascribe any further meaning, but the thoughts, they did arise. Those years stretched me beyond what I believed was my capacity. My health, finances, relationships, confidence, and hope were all tested, and some shattered. After tears in the ashes, I got up again to rebuild. Much of my life was built on incorrect assumptions that led to incorrect responses and behaviors that CONTRIBUTED to some of my harsh, life conditions. I simply wanted to do ALL I could to remove any ways that I was exacerbating the conditions of my life. Not to assign blame to myself, as I am not that all powerful, but as the 12 step programs Serenity Prayer states in one of it's lines... God, grant me the courage to change the things I can... I focused on what I could control. Me, my thoughts, the reaction to my thoughts, and my perspective. 

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What carried me through was the perspective of a quiet remembering; beneath everything, I am made of the same indestructible atomic materials as all of matter. Mixing physics with spirit helped me to ground my spiritual beliefs into something I could make tangible. 

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👩🏻‍⚕️Why I Chose Healing

My path into health and healing began long before these later chapters. As a young woman, I lived with ulcerative colitis, endometriosis, severe allergies, fibromyalgia, and chronic pain. I was often dismissed or misunderstood within the medical system and learned early what it feels like to be told your suffering isn’t real.

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💥Those experiences led me to explore food as medicine, the mind-body connection, and eventually Eastern and Western healing traditions. Through years of study, experimentation, and inner work, I learned that symptoms are not enemies, they are messages, like flashing check engine lights on a car.

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Coming from a life with lots of trauma, some part of me truly felt unlovable, not good enough, broken, unworthy and many of the other of the "not enough" terms many of us feel as humans. My truest healing came not from all the techniques and foods and supplements and treatment, but from finding a way to stop fighting my body. I realized I was perpetuating trauma on myself and repeating patterns I learned by the way I was treated. I had to stop dismissing and questioning my senses and invalidating myself like the doctors and adults in my life modeled. They didn't know better. But I had a choice to be them and perpetuate the pain, or change. I had to learn to listen and respond with love. I have a book I'm writing about this... stay tuned... 

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💝The Work I Offer Today

I believe health is not just the absence of disease, it’s our capacity to respond wisely and compassionately to imbalance. Often, symptoms are not the problem; they are the clue.

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My role is not to “fix” people, but to help them hear themselves more clearly, relate to their bodies with respect, and make changes rooted in self-trust rather than fear.

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I don’t believe the warn out saying that "suffering happens for a reason," but I do believe there is opportunity in what happens, and that opportunity can become a source of strength, meaning, and contribution.

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👭🏻Walking Together

If your path includes physical challenges, emotional pain, or a longing for deeper alignment, you don’t have to walk it alone. Sometimes what we need most is an experienced guide, and a compassionate witness, to help us take the next steps with courage and care.

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If this resonates, I invite you to schedule a complimentary consultation. We can explore whether we’re a good fit and what support might serve you best.

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It would be an honor to walk alongside you.

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Warmest Reflections,
💕Jo-e