~ My Journey ~

Hi and welcome!

I started my professional education as a Child & Youth counsellor as I wanted to provide support to young people, the kind I needed as a youth. After my training, I worked for the Alberta government as a career counsellor, a fraud investigator, and then I managed a job creation program for those that needed a little more help. During my career I branched into small business and created Tender Teddies, a teddy bear gift basket company and I started Body of Confidence – Personal Training. I even applied to the city police department and got through to the final selection process and then fate stepped in. A friend and I started KD & Co, operating one of the first ever food trucks. Meanwhile, I raised my three children, played competitive soccer, studied karate and looked for something more in life.

In 2006 I began a profound spiritual awakening. It began with an explosion of grief as I cried out to “God” for his cruel joke that was my life. I lay crumpled on my love seat with my arms wrapped around my sobbing body. Then the hug took on a different feeling. It was as though it was not my arms. I felt held, comforted. The crying stopped and something shifted inside of me. My life changed that day.

I began writing poetry, seeing colors in an incredible new way and felt life inside of me. My relationships changed and I went into a quiet, inner solitude. Noises were too hard on my ears, my body tingled, and I just wanted to sit with trees. I read anything I could get my hands on. I wanted to know more about energy and became a Reiki Master and opened up the pathway to my own healing journey.

I had a vision of my mom who died when I was 6. She was above me as I lay in my bed, sometime after midnight. I felt a cord being pulled through my body as if it pulled away grief, shame and guilt. The next morning I had Lily of the Valley in my garden. I didn’t plant it … but a week before I wanted to buy some and never did. There it was in my garden. I called my friend Donna ( the same name as my mother) and told her about the flower. I looked it up on the internet and it said it means “Return of Happiness.” The next day Donna called me back and she too had the flower in her garden. She also did not plant it. I called my aunt, my mom’s sister, and told her the story. I could almost see her rolling her eyes. But, the next day she called me back and told me she had been golfing and hit her ball into the trees. She went to retrieve it and found it resting against a sprig of Lily of the Valley.

*My mom died in early May and I continue to see the flower around that time every year. Wait until I tell you about my brother Kevin guiding me from beyond …

In 2007, I created a Vision Board and included places where I wanted to travel, experiences I wanted to have and fun, shiny new things.

To my surprise and delight, the things and places I put on my board came to me. I realized that I was creating my life and I began to live with intention.

In 2014, when my three kids were raised and on their own, a deeper freedom was calling me forward. For a year I trained to certify as a Life Coach and then resigned from my 25-year government job, sold my house and everything I owned and hit the road with my car, bike and new dome tent. I was on a quest to discover what remains when everything else is stripped away.

As a nomad I travelled from valleys to campgrounds and to mountain-tops.

I drove to Vancouver, down the California coast, saw the Grand Canyon, tented in Monument Valley, hiked the energy vortexes of Sedona, assisted with a coaching course in Denver, slid down the scorching white sand dunes in Colorado, biked the Rio Grande Gorge in New Mexico and then leaving my car in Phoenix, I hopped on a plane to Rome, Italy (where I got stripped of my identification, money, credit cards, passport, glasses and both sets of my car keys). With Divine guidance, I managed to tour Italy and Greece for three weeks and returned to Phoenix to meet a locksmith to get into my car before catching a flight back to Canada for my daughter’s engagement party and to fix my financial situation.

Within three days I was back in Phoenix and on the road to New Mexico for a Vision Quest. After 5 days alone in my tent and a heart-wrenching, magical (and cold) experience on the land outside Abiquiú in mid November frost, I flipped a coin, turned left and headed to Taos. I stayed in the cutest motel for three days not knowing where to go, when I woke up in the morning to the words of a song; “Country roads take me home.” I headed back to Canada in a raging December snowstorm.

It was unfathomable that I would return to my job. I met my manager for coffee and handed in my resignation. I felt freedom flowing in my veins.

After a couple of months, with a one-way ticket to London, I was on the road again. I spent two weeks exploring London and learning to navigate the Tube, flew to Hamburg, bused to Berlin, then on to Paris and took a train down to Thích Nhất Hạnh’s Plum Village in southern France where I chanted with the sisters for a week. From there I stepped onto the Camino de Santiago and walked for 45 days covering 1100 km, ending in Finisterre Spain. I caught a bus down to Porto and then Lisbon for few days and took a train up to Madrid, and with divine providence, at the height of my aloneness, I met a Canadian friend who was passing through. A flight to to Frankfurt got me home.

In September I arranged to meet a friend that I’d met at Plum Village. We decided on a Sivinanda yoga retreat in the Austrian Alps. After zenning out for a week I caught a flight to Italy and lived in isolation at the top of Monte Subasio, outside of Assisi. There I experienced the torturous pain of intense loneliness, lived a dark night of the soul and asked God to take my life rather than continue to let me live in emptiness and despair. Instead, he woke me up with the words to a song in my head, “Come with me, to the sea, the sea of love.” It was November in Italy and the weather was becoming cold and wet with daily rain. It was the call I was waiting for. With a vision of pink coral and a salty sea, I booked a ticket to Mexico.

I landed in Cancun and was guided to a small fishing village where I met Michel, a beautiful man from Quebec who was on his own journey. We sat beside each other to meditate when suddenly our 7 chakras connected and I felt an inner explosion. My spiritual rebirth had begun. I was turned inside out and upside down and lived healing that was so intense and profound as I was being created anew (but kicking and screaming all the way). I was no longer the same person.

Michel and I returned to Canada for three years and adjusted to a new vibration.

Then we got married and drove across Canada. The next month synchronicity showed us the way. We sold everything (again) and landed in Nice in the South of France to experience life on the Côte d’Azur. Within four months covid hit. Since we couldn’t travel to Canada, we stayed for three and a half years.

The adventure continued under divine guidance that called us to Mt Shasta California where we now live among the pine tress, daily herds of passing deer, bright, colorful birds and rascally squirrels that continue to find a way to get to the bird seed.

It is with such gratitude that I get to do this work and meet the most amazing people who light up my heart every day.

Thank you for reading.

with Love and Respect,

Kathy