Hi! I'm Christine, a mom to 3 amazing kids and wife to my best friend. I decided to create this blog because I found a passion to help women find confidence. Ironically... that passion was created through fitness.. not my favorite thing to do in the world. Ha, but I am a firm believer that opportunities present themselves in our darkest moments. We just need to make sure we have our hearts and eyes open at all times.
Wow... So where do I even begin..
I guess in order to know who I am and what I stand for... you should know a little about my past.
Back in 1997, I lost my brother due to a medical malpractice. That saying "life is too short" had no meaning to me until that day. One of the hardest emotional things I had ever faced up until that point in my life. I was 18 years old at the time and he was 16 years old. I spent the following year going to the cemetery every single day... sometimes several times a day.
You ask yourself a lot of questions when it comes to death. And one day.. I asked myself.. "What are you doing?". I felt as if I was letting my life wither away and so I told myself from that moment on.. Screw it! Screw life! I decided I was gonna live life to its fullest. Atleast what I thought was the fullest at that time. Low and behold.. Living life to the fullest in your early 20's consists of a lot of drinking and partying. Trust me when I say that you can easily expose yourself to a lot of damage when you are in a fragile state of of mind. And of course.. thats when I met my ex. Wont go into the details.. but lets just say.. I had no idea what a healthy relationship looked like.
When the only type of communication consists of belittling each other in between the yelling and obscenities.. There is DEFINITELY something wrong! It took years.. nine years to be exact to built up the strength to leave and file for divorce. But with divorce, came bills, foreclosure, more depression (on top of what was already there due to the failing relationship), and the brink of bankruptcy.
At the time, I had been in Corporate America for about 8 years and was bringing in a great income.. but with everything I was going through... paying the mortgage alone would exhaust almost my entire months finances. It got to the point where I was "charging" my mortgage so that I could use my paycheck to pay for food.. or vice versa.. Didn't matter where the money was coming from as long as it was coming. Low and behold, that didn't last long. Foreclosure was my only option, especially with the market being turned upside down during that time.
So in the mist of all this, taking care of myself was the furthest from my mind. In fact, I got to the point where I was smoking about a pack of cigarettes a week, drinking a bottle of wine a night, and my diet consisted of chips and coffee.
For many weekends during those years, I would take atleast 1-2 days off to literally take a break from the world! Yea... I would basically "check out". And being a mom of 2 at the time.. I had basically trained them to take the time off with me. I still remember closing all the curtains, confiing myself to my bedroom, me and my girls piled on the bed and we would watch movies all day. PJ's, no shower, and our food was rotating between ramen noodles, beefaroni, chips, and beef jerky. This probably happened for a good 5 years and at least 3 times a month during that time. Birthday parties, family get togethers, grocery shopping or any event was basically off the table during those days that I checked out.
One of the biggest things I took away from this experience was that I needed to start to rebuild myself. I was lost. I had become a different person. And it took everything in me to even began to search to discover myself.
I knew that I did not like the person that I was.. and prior to that, I was a scared naive 19 year old. So going back to the old me wasn't even an option anymore. I wanted to create a NEW me. Is that even possible? I wasn't sure, but anything was better than the person I was trying to run away from. I started by looking at all the things I was....
- lost and confused
- negatived minded
- a worrier
- someone that complained about everything and everyone
- filled with self-doubt
- hot tempered
- agressive
-defensive
and I made a list of qualities of the person I wanted to BECOME..
- positive
- motivated
- engaged in life
- happy
- humble
- grateful
- passive
- uplifting
And so the journey began...
I say journey because I truly do believe that our entire life is a set of journeys.
I started out by accepting all the negative qualities about myself and ridding them once and for all. I began mending broken relationships with my family and friends that I secluded myself from.
During the process, I found my best friend and husband. And he introduced me to the concept of Positive Thinking. Sounds so simple right? Well let me tell you.. someone like me that had been through hell and back and faced so many adversities in my life before hitting my 30's.. This was a HARD concept to accept yet alone understand. How can someone be positive when they had been filled with so many doubts and insecurities? See, I didnt just lose myself over the years, I lost my FAITH too.
A year after meeting my husband, we found out we were pregnant. That pregnancy was very difficult and so the depression sunk in again.. but with a vengeance! Bed rest was prescribed and at 30 weeks, I went into pre-term labor. I remember my Dr telling me that most likely I would have a stronger case of Post-Partum Depression because I had depression so early on in my pregnancy. But... I was determined to put up a fight against my mind and withframe from using any meds.
So as soon as I was given the O.K. from my Dr to start exercising... I hit the ground running... I knew I needed to take time to focus on me.. and it all started with getting my health back on track!
Long story short... I was a QUITTER! I quit every single time I made any attempt to focus on ME. I just couldn't do it!
3.5 years later.. I was run-down, tired of being tired, depressed ( again....), a hypo-chondriac, and out of shape! I KNEW I need to make a change. At this point in my life, something pretty amazing happened. Hubby introduced me to this documentary called The Secret. Holy WOW! To say that my life shifted would be an understatement. I was shaken from my CORE!
You mean to tell me that WE have EVERY CONTROL our life and the direction we want it to go? This intrigued me! I was ready! Ready to embrace positivity and be TEACHABLE to Laws of Attraction.
So part of my fitness journey consisted of spending about 30 minutes to an hour looking up Transformation Pics of women that had similar body styles to myself. For some reason, if I saw THEIR transformation, it would somehow inspire me to get my butt off the couch and get a workout done. We had this workout called P90X that was HARD! So much of my research was googling women that had done this workout. Something about seeing someone else do something that just sparked that fire in me. Needless to say.. spending all that time looking up results didn't leave much time for me to "actually" workout.. It seriously was a never-ending cycle. But one day.. something happened...
I came across this thing called "coaching"... What was it? You mean to tell me that I could become a Stay at Home Mom and generate income? All from just "working out" and sharing it?
I was in shock. In fact, I almost immediately started to Ugly Cry at the possibility that this opportunity was created for ME!
And so I jumped into Coaching as a business! NO CLUE about what it was or where it would lead me! Only the thought of wonderful possibilities to impact the lives of others. After signing up, I joined my very first challenge group with my amazing coach and mentor. And something pretty special happened to me... I DIDNT QUIT! I actually made it through one of the toughest Beachbody programs created... P90X! Check out my results
Making the decision to become a coach has by far been one of the most important decisions I've made to date! It has helped me find myself, my passion, my faith, and others! I have been given a Purpose in life stronger than myself to help women that have struggled with finding themselves, those that have lost themselves, and those that want to discover who they really are. I am more confident, patient, faithful, loving, gracious, and humble.
Never would I have imaged that I would have the ability to inspire others when all I did was join Beachbody to find myself.
Oh.. and I forgot to mention... I AM a stay-at-home-mom now! and work with other moms to help build financial freedom for their families all while doing so from the comfort of their homes. I have been blessed such an amazing opportunity to create a Life by Design and help others do the same, that I would be doing an injustice if I didn't SHARE!
You can keep up with me and my journey here on this blog, by following me on FACEBOOK, by following along with me on INSTAGRAM, or by connecting with our BELIEVE FIT ACHIEVE FIT community via Facebook!
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