It Was Always About Relationships: From Bodywork and Business to Teaching Love

I didn’t start as a relationship coach, nor did I think I’d end up in this field, co-writing a book on extraordinary love and facilitating relationship workshops with my husband.

Now, looking back, it all makes sense. Life had a plan for me, my professional past prepared me, and I couldn’t be more thrilled.

I started my career as a licensed bodyworker 30 years ago. People brought their bodies to my table, and they shared their souls. 

In the process of relaxing muscles and clearing fascia patterns, my clients spoke about their challenges, mostly relationship stuff. I listened, I asked questions, and I created a safe space for emotional release. Clients came to me with tight shoulders, aching backs, old injuries, and chronic tension. As we worked with the body, emotions moved. 

As a muscle softened and I offered compassionate inquiry, something else softened too. A person began to see a relationship differently, feel grief they had been holding, or realize there was a courageous conversation they needed to have with someone they cared about.

I remember fondly one of the married couples whom I worked with. 

Each had a session with me once a month. They created this lovely ritual where the partner who wasn’t receiving a massage would prepare dinner for the one who was. 

Because I knew and cared about them both, our sessions became a safe and confidential place to explore what was happening in their marriage. I would help one of them loosen their grip on being right long enough to consider honoring their partner’s experience.

Most often, though, it was women on my table who were trying to find the courage and the words to communicate something important to their partners. They wanted more affection, more time together, more understanding, or more support. 

Sometimes these clients were frustrated because they felt he should already know. I would say a loving version of, “He can’t read your mind.” And I encouraged them to clarify what they actually wanted so they could simply ask for it without blaming their partner for not already knowing.

At the time, I didn’t consider my practice a space for relationship transformation. I was simply helping people find more physical, emotional, and spiritual healing. I experienced again and again that their healing and revelations from the session impacted what mattered most in their lives—their relationships.

And as I became a wellness entrepreneur, I realized relationships were at the root of my success.

As my wellness career grew, I began distributing Amazon Herbs. What started small expanded into a national business. I began training sales teams, leading educational seminars, mentoring entrepreneurs, and building my organization, which eventually reached $2.4 million in annual sales.

What I learned during those years was that business is deeply relational, and that I am really gifted at building authentic relationships.

Trust and clear agreements created mutual respect. Follow-through built sustainable sales. My business grew because of the loving, considerate, and conscious relationships I developed.

Later, as I moved more deeply into entrepreneurship education—through leadership development and coaching—the same theme became obvious.

Clients came to me wanting help with a business, but very quickly we would be talking about their marriage, their family, or the support they did or didn’t feel at home. Starting or running a business can create tremendous relationship stress, and the issues that arise need conscious attention. Because a lot of business questions are really relationship questions, too, I learned to serve my clients as a holistic coach who not only talked strategy, but helped examine old beliefs and resolve relationship and communication issues.

I remember one woman who took a twelve-week business course with me. She came in with a brilliant business idea and a lot of enthusiasm. As we moved through the market research and looked honestly at what it would take to implement, she recognized she was not aligned with it and decided not to pursue it. We both sensed this was actually a good outcome. 

About three years later, I saw her walking with her husband on a trail around a local lake. She introduced me to him, and he looked at me and said, “I’m so glad to meet you. You saved our marriage.” 

My biggest learnings came through my own relationship challenges.

Throughout all of the chapters of my work, I was always engaged in my own personal and spiritual development. I read constantly, went to workshops, studied emotional intelligence, embodiment, spirituality, intimacy, and human behavior. 

I was exploring those questions professionally as well as personally because I was also working through some very challenging patterns in my relationships. 

These difficult relationships were my greatest teachers. 

I recognized where I habitually over-accommodated, lost myself in love, and needed greater self-regard to speak my truth. I came to see that another person’s disappointment doesn’t mean I’ve done something wrong. Crucially, I learned that love and compatibility are not the same—and that knowing myself deeply is the foundation for creating true intimacy with another.

When I look back, I can see that relationship intelligence was always my passion. 

It was there on the bodywork table, in sales and entrepreneurship, in leadership and coaching, and in my own intimate life. 

Being in a thriving, intimate relationship is life-changing! 

When I met Gavin, he had already spent four decades working as a therapist with individuals and couples. We came together with our professional backgrounds and a shared love of growth, truth, relationship, and what it means to embrace being both human and divine.

Naturally, we started applying everything to us. We noticed what was working. We paid attention when we got triggered. We talked about what created safety, what helped us repair, what allowed us to stay honest, and how we could remain two whole people while also creating a very strong “we.”

Over time, we began naming some of those practices and patterns, and they became the foundation and frameworks for what we now teach through our relationship offerings, The Real Us.

Most of us were never taught how to create and sustain healthy relationships. 

We weren’t taught how to repair after hurting someone we love, how to ask clearly for what we want, how to listen when our partner sees things completely differently, or what to do when an old wound gets triggered. We weren’t taught how to apologize well, how to stay true to ourselves in a relationship, or how to create the kind of emotional safety and transparency where love can deepen.

Yet relationship skills influence every part of our lives. Relationships aren't a separate category. Relationships live in our bodies, our work, our money, our families, our confidence, our health, and our sense of possibility.

The quality of our relationships profoundly influences the quality of our lives.

I like to consider myself a lifelong student of love. Gavin and I both do. We are forever learning, practicing, getting things wrong, repairing, laughing, asking better questions, and discovering more about each other.

And really, that is the heart of it. Extraordinary love is something we keep learning. We both know in our bones how blessed we are to have what we are living in relationship, and together we find it is a profound joy to support others in raising the bar and opening to new levels of honesty, compassion, and intimacy.