This is me.
I love communication. I discovered the thrill of connection through the stage. No doubt all of my funny faces, deep sighs and exclamations have already tipped you off to this fact. I fell in love with musical theatre first because in that world, all ways of story telling intersect. It’s an exuberant vortex of outrageous communication. I mean come on, the whole premise is that the story gets so BIG that words aren’t enough on their own, they must be sung! I was drunk on that regularly. I could sing, speak, dance, create, AND be in front of an audience? Are you kidding me? I was in heaven. That said, I wasn’t designed to be happy living out of a suitcase, so the actor’s life was not for me. I also did not ever enjoy crawling into the skin of a character. I couldn’t ever really “get there” as an actor. It was always easier for me when I was just being myself.
I quickly moved into writing (much safer) which lead me to poetry, then scripts, and then finally to film which built my skillset as a director. Film really developed my chops as a storyteller because I was fascinated by silent films. I wrote and directed a handful of them. This might seem a bit insane because I am clearly someone who LOVES words, but I saw this medium as the ultimate challenge in communication: if you take out the dialogue, you have to work harder with what you have: tone, mood, lighting, and the rhythm of editing… You know you’ve succeeded if the audience embraces the story without even noticing that ‘’something is missing”.
Paying the rent got in the way of all of that lovely creative development so I decided to throw myself into PR, marketing and sales. Turns out that’s story too. It’s just a different kind of package. People get clever and stupid in marketing and lose their story instead of magnifying it. Sales and promotion became a significant invitation and challenge for me.
Around this time I was also being mentored by the deeply brilliant actress, writer and self-expression teacher, Paula Shaw. Her workshop “The Max with Paula Shaw” which I produced for the next ten years made a deep impact on me, in fact Friday night in Live Your Best Story (my retreat weekend on Bowen Island) is directly connected to the work I did with her.
Love and family called and I became a mom to three fantastic boys which is a story unto itself, but it also meant that I needed to find a way to bring all of these seemingly eclectic skills to the table and build a business I could do from home. That’s when Network Marketing found me and let me tell you, the only way to achieve peace and success in that arena is by knowing exactly who you are, and more importantly, who you are not. I rose quickly to the top, earning the trips, the cars, the accolades and bling. While all of that was great, my most substantial achievement during that time was recognizing and trusting my own story.
From there I dove head first into conversations about authenticity, which lead to truth marketing and transparency, then on to sustainable life and business practices. All of this grew into the creation of Live Your Best Story and then on to what is my true calling: Core Story Work.
Core Story is where all of my innate abilities (expression, theatricality, storytelling, and personal connection) meet my acquired skills (writing, PR and marketing, sales, service, communication and people). It’s as if my entire life groomed me to do this. I believe it did and that’s part of Core Story work too. You know the whole ‘’surrender’’ thing we talk about? This is it for me. It’s Core Story. It’s the story we can’t run fast enough from because it IS us, like a silent companion just waiting for us to get it, to see how freaking awesome we already are.
This is me:
- I’ve been talking since I could put sounds together.
- I’ve been writing since I could hold a pencil.
- I still type 90 words or more per minute.
- Show me an open stage and I’ll get on it.
Story is where I live and breathe.
There’s so much more to this story including cancer, meeting my story writing partner, doing my first triathlon, re-writing my money story, the whole career crash and rebuild… and so much more, but that’s for another day.
Right now it’s time to get started on YOUR JOURNEY. I want to keep listening for what is at the core of our story together. Let’s keep going. Your story awaits.
Big love to you.
xxT