Welcome! I am so glad you're here.

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When I first envisioned The Broken and Beautiful, I could not have imagined that I would be working alongside a beautiful team of coaches, Spiritual Directors and therapists who are not only skilled, but thoroughly invested in offering hope and kindness to our community here in Lincoln, Nebraska and online.

 

My career began as a nurse in southern California. I spent about 20 years in clinical nursing, working at prestigious institutions like Loma Linda University Children's Hospital as a case manager for pediatric Infectious Diseases and Children's Hospital Colorado in the pediatric ENT outpatient clinic where our physicians performed cochlear implants and repaired cleft palates for much of the midwest.  

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In many ways, I loved this work! I was proud to be a part of something so incredibly life changing. Yet, I always felt I didn't have enough time with patients or their families. I also wanted to have more impact in the ways care was offered. I discovered that what I most enjoyed was the connection with each individual family, and education I could offer as a nurse, providing heart care for difficult medical issues. 

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Over time, I came to understand that I needed to blaze a different trail and that has ended up here where I feel so grateful and honored to get to say, "I can't believe I get to do what I do!"  

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In 2009 I went back to "school", only this time it was more about learning who I was and why I struggled so much with exhaustion, eating issues, a need for control and had difficulty sleeping. I went through years of growth, slowly learning to understand what was driving me, what hurts were lingering from my past, and how to open my heart to trust that other people could be safe. I learned that I chronically dismissed myself in ways that left me feeling constantly re-traumatized. I had two beautiful mentors who have forever changed my inner landscape with their presence and teaching. They helped me unearth what was keeping my brain circulating on its mental cul de sac. They were also spiritual helpers who gave me permission to evaluate what I believed, learn to discover what I was feeling and tell the truth about ways my heart had been broken.

 

It didn't take long for me to want to offer back what I had been given.  That is why I am here doing what I do at The Broken and Beautiful.

 

What I do exactly is offer trauma informed coaching services in Lincoln, Nebraska and online. I am a Storywork Counselor* and Enneagram Coach. Additionally, I offer detailed, professional Enneagram Discovery sessions.

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I am also the founder and president of the board for Courageous Pathways, a non-profit formed to support women who are in harmful relationships. 

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Day to day, I work with clients in one on one or group settings as well as mentor other Storywork Counselors. 

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For those who would like more understanding about what Storywork and the Enneagram are, let me share a few introductory details to try and explain why I and so many others have found these tools particularly helpful in recovering a sense of homecoming for your heart, mind, body and soul. 

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Storywork is a process of attuning to your experiences by writing and sharing stories from your life in one on one Storywork Counseling sessions. The stories that are most necessary to talk about occur in childhood. Sometimes, however, people have difficulty remembering their childhood. The memories can be fuzzy or fragmented. When that's the case, it can be necessary to begin Storywork by identifying current circumstances where you feel stuck and work backwards from there - like following a thread.

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The experience of having a trained, skilled and non-judgmental listener can radically help to disentangle who you are and what happened inside you from what happened to you.

 

People often believe that they have not experienced trauma. While I would make the case that very few escape some experience of trauma and that there are indeed levels of severity regarding trauma, what actually determines what is traumatic and the severity (level of traumatization) of an experience isn't necessarily an arbitrary scale outside of yourself. Except in the cases of obvious physical and sexual harm, trauma can be sneaky and difficult to see from the outside. What happened to you may be an emotional, mental, spiritual or soul wound that cannot be x-rayed or swabbed. How you perceive what happened to you and how you have had to shift your heart and soul to endure whatever that was, is critical data to help assess for the lingering effects of trauma. There is no way to measure that except by how your heart and body feel as a result of what happened.

 

Because culture: secular and sacred, have valued "rational" thought and clinical findings over feelings for so long, it can take time to be convinced that what happened to your mind, heart and soul not only matters, but is in fact vital information for healing to occur! I am convinced that this process is good for anyone and utterly life changing for many! 

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How long you spend doing Storywork is entirely up to you. Some spend a few weeks, others a few years. Healing takes as long as it takes. And, while there are many avenues to healing, Storywork is a primary way that I help you to connect with the healing that is possible for you. 

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Another tool I use to help you is called the Enneagram. The information from the Enneagram provides a fast track to learning what is unconsciously driving you. It is a system of 9 different ways that we keep doing the same thing expecting different results.

 

Various levels of knowledge of the Enneagram have exploded over the past years. We find anecdotal and cute conversations about it from podcasts to life groups. What very few express, however, is that the Enneagram is a powerful and precise way to help us understand the patterns of our personality. Patterns that are not beneficial to health and abundance in relationships. Those ways of relating have created walls around us for protection, but eventually those walls become a prison and keep us from realizing our incredible potential.​

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Because both Storywork and the Enneagram are deeply practical ways of becoming unstuck, combining Storywork and the Enneagram is incredibly helpful! Where therapy is good and necessary for certain issues, these two methods are helpful in producing momentum in your healing process. And, even though "quick" is never the goal, it is helpful to have practical ways to think about how to engage differently within the context of our lives - families, jobs, spouses, church, and in any relationship! The Enneagram and Storywork both offer practical and meaningful ways to think differently, to feel better and to heal!

 

I am passionate about doing this work because I know how much my life has been changed by experienced, safe people who invested in my growth and wellbeing. My heart has been impacted and indeed healed, by their kindness, curiosity and gentleness as they helped me get back to me!

 

If you would like to talk to me, please click on "contact me" under my picture. I am very responsive, so know that if you reach out, I will be here to reach back. 

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What are you waiting for, dear one? Is it time?

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*Storywork Counseling is not therapy and is not a substitute for either licensed mental health care or medical care.

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