Becoming All of You — Shadow + Light

When I decided to step away from a lucrative, stable career in corporate to strike out on my own in business, I took a considerable risk.

I had a vision of running my own business and helping women increase their productivity without compromising their health, but I wasn’t sure of the path I needed to take to make this happen.

My business took many turns before I understood the direction it was going to take.

The career I left in corporate, working in ethics at a big four accounting firm, a career of necessity, supported me financially while I garnered the capacity to go out on my own. Now on the other side of that, my longings still felt entirely precocious. As a yoga teacher, I had visions of doing one-on-one private yoga therapy sessions. As a writer, I wanted to move forward with a book I wrote about traveling around the world by myself on one-way tickets a few years prior. As a yogi who healed via astrology and Ayurveda, I studied to become an Ayurvedic nutritionist. Each step I took helped me further discern the next step I needed to take.

After several months of a floundering though,  I realized that my half-hearted vision for my business was not going to generate the income I wanted, so I adjusted my plans. I took a consulting gig with a hedge fund for a whole year to support my business.

In the meanwhile, my love of learning took the front seat of my life. I went back to school to train in health coaching and behavior change at Duke Integrative Medicine. I studied Positive Psychology formally with Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar, and resilience with Dr. Maria Sirois. Simultaneously, my astrology mentor, Debra Silverman took me further under her wing to help me understand how to incorporate astrology in a therapeutic capacity as she does. (She’s a psychotherapist and esoteric astrologer, and has had a booming practice combining both skills sets for close to forty years.) I underwent several years of one-one mentorship with Deb and had the privilege of learning astrology in a very intimate, individualized, relationship. Doing this while working so hard to sharpen my capacity as a transformational coach, became a massive undertaking.

I worked, practiced and digested copious amounts of information and integrated them. I coached and counseled many clients for free as I honed my skill and craft, putting my programs through lots of beta testing. Graduating from Duke Integrative Medicine as a Certified Health Coach specializing in behavior change, a massive accomplishment unto itself, felt like its own becoming. Doing it in sync while I trained under Deb, and studying positive psychology (I went on to become a TA for the Pos Psych program I graduated from) provided me the opportunity to craft a response to what felt like my deepest soul longing– to take multiple disciplines and fuse them into something potent, and unique. On top of this, I also formally studied with Dr. Jessica Drummond to specialize my health coaching knowledge as it applied to women’s hormonal health. Yes, this was so much work, but work I loved deeply. The result became the practice I am so proud of today and the Lunar Logic Methodology ™.

Fortunately enough, Debra held my hand through the whole process.

What many people don’t understand when they set out to become a practitioner in the healing arts, is that knowledge proficiency (while a crucial lifelong quest) is only one piece of the equation. Knowledge doesn’t matter if it’s not embodied. Further, you can only take others as far as you’ve gone, and this matters when it comes to navigating your shadow and helping others do the same. This requires substantial integration, and honestly, wise counsel from an outsider who has walked the path ahead of you and holds wisdom. After all, we can’t see our own shadows! That’s what Deb is to me. A teacher, yes, and also a real mentor who believed in me, and pushed me to become a better version of myself. I can’t talk about how Deb showed up for me without becoming incredibly teary.

In the words of leadership expert, Warren Bennis, “Becoming a leader is synonymous with becoming yourself. It’s precisely that simple, and it’s also that difficult.”

For a couple of years, I worked without a website, an online presence or any formal marketing as I focused day in and day out on honing my knowledge and building my business offline. As I learned and digested more, I’d fly to Boulder where Debra lived to study with her in her living room. On one trip, after back to back days with Deb studying charts and applying astrological knowledge, she put me through a process she created called  The Four Elements.  Within minutes of the process, I had a total meltdown. We discovered an aspect of myself that needed support. So, I booked a return to Deb’s to do a two-day transformation intensive— I wouldn’t study astrology at all, and instead would just spend two full days on my healing. During this therapeutic intensive, we thoroughly went through my life, looking at all the reasons why it didn’t feel safe for me to use my voice. After the intensive, I went home and launched my website.

Six years later, I developed a business and life I am deeply proud of. Having gone from the bold leap of ditching a high-paying, solid, stable corporate gig to voluntarily stepping out on my own (in the middle of a recession) to creating a business around a very vulnerable personal story to combining two very radically different yet extremely important sides of myself (my hardcore science-loving, evidence-based research geekiness + my devout dedication to the art of astrology) in one business, here’s what I learned:

More than anything, though, having the courage to be all of me in my business challenged me to accept who I am in all aspects of my life. Astrology, and particularly Deb, helped me on this journey more than I can express.

For me, success was anything but a race. It took time – lots of it – and consistent, dedicated effort, day in and day out, to build a practice that authentically represented me. (Honestly, I’ve worked on this tirelessly for way longer than the story I’m telling you here allows you to see.)

Having remained faithful to my dreams, I’ve developed a short list of takeaways for creating a professional life you love and amplifying your success: