The Journey to Rooted in Presence

Today, I am a healthy, happy, sober woman living in a beautiful Texas river town with my son and our two cats. I’m in a loving relationship with an emotionally intelligent man and grateful for the life I wake up to each day. Though, this wasn’t always the case. It came as a result of hard work, perseverance and a desire to not give up.

Several years ago, I wanted to end my life. I had a plan but was desperately looking for another path. One day, there was a kind, patient woman on the other end of the phone after I dialed 9-8-8, the national 24/7 crisis hotline. She didn’t ultimately save my life, but she was part of the emergence of a new path. 

I saw glimpses of this path throughout the decade+ long journey through addiction and mental health issues. I had precious moments with meditation, qigong, breathwork, and yoga filling in the gaps, providing insight and reassurance that everything would be alright. But I also had many depressed and anxiety filled moments where I felt lost and afraid. Whenever that part of me showed up, it was extremely challenging to return to the soul-satisfying, comforting feeling of being held by my higher self. However, I eventually learned she wasn’t ever that far away, and I began to crave her presence more and more.

I graduated with my Bachelor of Social Work degree in 2015 and I followed my fellow classmates to graduate school immediately afterwards, only to “take a short break” when I gave birth to my son in the summer of 2016. That “short break” turned into 4 years due to unmanaged mental health concerns and a codependent relationship with substances. I graciously thank the 2020 pandemic for slowing everything down in order for me to truly take inventory and begin seeing things clearly.

Choosing sobriety was one of the best decisions I ever made for my future self. I stopped drinking and smoking, and started paying way more attention to other unhealthy habits and codependent relationships in my life. As I practiced recovery in all its forms, I began to integrate self-compassion in my self-care routine, a skill I learned and obsessively dove into during my internship when I finally went to finish my Master of Social Work program. One act of self-kindness was becoming an author, which was a childhood dream come true!

Upon completing my MSW, it still took me a couple years to take the licensure exam to do anything “official” with it because I was still dealing with self-doubt and fear of the unknown. In 2021, I got a job as a family coordinator, later turned peer leader, to help at-risk teens and their families recover from substance misuse and abuse. That same year, I also enrolled into Marisa Peer’s hypnosis program. Starting in 2019, I was in and out of the online life coaching world, and after completing the hypnosis program, I was back in as Mama Metta. Yet, just as it had been before, I experienced high highs and low lows with the online world, and my mental/emotional health suffered the consequences. In 2023, my parents sat me down for a very uncomfortable but necessary conversation. I had tried to “do it my way” for so long. It was time to do something wildly different.

I buckled down, studied for a month straight, took my licensure exam by the end of summer 2023, and became a therapist at an outpatient program in San Antonio. The job had perks, lots of personal and professional lessons, but it didn’t pan out to be what I had initially expected. I held 3 jobs at some point while simultaneously watching substance use destroy the relationship I was in. Everything shattered around the same time I hired a therapist for the first time in my adult life. She was, and continues to be, a saving grace. 

During my first year as a therapist, I quickly noticed a gap in my abilities to help at the level I desired. I wanted to go deeper than I was able to with what I knew at the time, so I invested time and resources into learning Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR). This tool is my “magic wand” in my therapy office. It not only helps to recover from past wounds and life adversities, but it can help by rewiring old narratives and belief systems that no longer support or protect in the same ways they once did. It has personally helped me, and I have seen through client successes how it loosens the grip of the past and allows freedom, peace, and resolution to appear.

While there is so much more to my story, what is shared here is part of the timeline that brought me to Rooted in Presence, my private practice. I now know how to help those struggling with addiction, unhealthy habits, attachment wounds, mood instability, self-doubt, feelings of worthlessness, and excessive worrying, because I have lived through it and made it to the other side. It has been deliberate hard work with lots of self-analysis and intentional behavior changes, but the effort and commitment has changed my entire life for the better. And I want to help you also create the life of your dreams. Whenever you’re ready, I am here, rooted in presence.

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