Sometimes it feels like a big wink from the universe, this notion that my life’s work has become about midwifing others to birth their authentic selves. For a good part of my own life, the paradoxical truth was that I felt most like myself when I was pretending to be somebody else.

In fact, up until the age of 18 I was planning to become a professional actress on Broadway. Performing in theater was my passion and my happy place. On stage I was fearless and outgoing, I felt alive and intimately connected with my audience in my ability to express the raw authenticity of my characters’ inner experience. In stark contrast, in real life I was quiet, awkward and painfully shy. My own inner experience in response to a whole host of difficult early-life circumstances, felt like a painful, unwelcome and inexpressible place that I would go to great lengths to hide.

For years I hid my pain, anxieties and insecurities behind the roles I played on stage and off stage- through academic achievement, perfectionism, pleasing and taking care of everyone, but myself. That is until my early thirties, when a series of life crises and the exhaustion and loneliness of keeping up with this type of “super-woman” invulnerability brought me to my breaking point. Following long illnesses and the untimely deaths of both my father and step-father, trying to support my grieving family while minimizing my own grief, all the while striving to be the “perfect” mother to my three young children and manage a career-I spun into depression and despair.

While at the time, this despair felt like the end of life as I knew it, in hindsight, it was the catalyst that initiated me onto a journey that has actually brought me to life in a much greater way than I had previously known. This journey has, over the past 15 years, taken me through some deep self-inquiry, soul searching, heart healing and personal discovery. It has led me to amazing spiritual teachers, healers and counselors who have been my great allies, guides, and mentors. It has led me to countless books, and courses and trainings in mindfulness, meditation, transformation, coaching, shamanic studies and energy healing.

“Coming to life” has had many facets for me, but most notably it has been about awakening to who I Truly Am beyond my body, beyond my personality, beyond my wound stories, and beyond who I ever thought I needed to be in order to feel acceptable, worthy, and loved. It has been about learning to welcome, without judgment and with great compassion, the imperfect, inconvenient and messy parts of myself. It has been about growing a relationship with my Soul, discovering its passions and purpose and reorienting my sense of self around an expanded, intrinsic and unconditional sense of wholeness, worthiness and lovability. Most of all, it has been about the moment-to-moment, courageous practice of intentionally living my life from this place.

So my acting days are over. The aliveness and authenticity I first made contact with by pretending to be somebody else, I can finally access by being ever more fully myself. In truth, I have gone from actress to alchemist, by making the parts of myself I thought I had to hide, into a crucible for transformation and awakening.