The Stories We Tell - A Courageous Story From a Mompreneur

This is, “The Stories We Tell,” a weekly series of true accounts in all things motherhood. These 100% vulnerable, raw and ferociously honest tales are taken from the monthly LA based storytelling event, Mothers Unleashed. This week, we’re sending you Kimberly’s story about the literal blood, sweat, and tears she poured into making herself into the successful mompreneur she is today. Kimberly is the founder of Crown Yourself, a high-performance coaching service.

I pulled the toilet paper through my legs and there it was, blood. I stared at the spotted paper with the strangest sense of calm and dread as my heart sank into the bowels of the hotel’s porcelain throne. I slowly called my midwife, “I’m bleeding.” 

It was December 2016, I was about six weeks pregnant, 269 miles away from home without my husband, in a program that had just thrown me over the $40,000 mark in credit card debt  because I believed in my soul and in my gut that it would change my life. Because dear God, something had to give!

For two years, I had been stuck in a spiraling vortex of negativity, self-doubt and shame. And in the summer of 2016, it all seemed to come to a head - I staged my dad’s intervention which was 30 years in the making, separated myself from my parents, and was working a job teaching Pilates on the side for $28/hour while taking coaching calls for even less than that from my car with the air conditioning blowing so hard that my papers of notes would fly up in my face. 

This dream business...hell, my dream life...of coaching and speaking, living remotely, traveling the world with my husband and my two gorgeous kids in a fabulously toned body (of course). It had all seemed so possible on my honeymoon. Granted everything’s a little better after a couple glasses of wine on the coast of Italy, but now it felt like a pipedream - a beautiful website, a fancy “CEO” title, some sparkles, crowns and motivation but it was nothing more than a bedazzled turd. People loved the name though, Crown Yourself. 

Everything about me felt fake - a show of success shrouded in jadedness. When had I become so cynical? When did I decide that other people’s opinions of me would rule my life? I’d had a good few months of self-evaluation after splitting with my parents that left me wondering… what the actual f*ck had happened to me? 

I used to be so bold and confident. I had more motivation and ambition in my pinky than most people experience in a lifetime. But I’d been knocked around a bit, in every manner of speaking, and I’d built up so many walls to protect myself from failure that I was also protecting myself from my own success. I’d overcome my own blocks and battles before, having battled 10 years of bulimia and recovered with no psychological intervention. But I wanted to know, how did I do it? I had this gut feeling that if I could just identify the mental strategies I used to free myself from hating my body then, I could certainly use those same strategies to free myself from hating this cynical and judgemental version of me that I had become. 

Because I look back on those years of bulimia and I don’t consider myself recovered - I transformed. I don’t even recognize that girl anymore. Just the thought of throwing up is...awful. I shifted into a totally new identity. I knew I needed another transformation. Some sort of massive identity-overhaul… and I didn’t want it to take 10 years. 

“How did I do it? How did I do it?” I thought to myself, pacing in the space between my living room and the kitchen. First, I accepted that no one else was holding me back but me. Okay got that. And then I got certified in Pilates! Lightbulb! It was through teaching and sharing my own struggles and knowledge that I made the most dramatic change. I had to shift to service! I whipped out my Google Search bar and started looking for any program or certification in coaching or mindset reprogramming. And down the research rabbit hole I went until I stumbled upon this Neuro Linguistic Programming Coaching certification program. Its website was from the 70s, but for some reason, it just felt right. Perhaps it was because the founder had trained Tony Robbins’ team. So this guy was an OG of NLP. I called and left a message. The next day I was on the phone with Laura from Jersey chatting for an hour about the program, about my struggles, about my fears, about everything. She then said the price. $5000. I didn’t have the money. The program started in four weeks. And I was like, “This is crazy.” 

But something in my gut just said, “This is going to change your life.” So I didn’t completely poo-poo the idea. We scheduled a call for the following week. Much happened within that week - Donald Trump became president… and I took four pregnancy tests. I don’t know which one made me do a harder double-take. I thought it would be hard for me to get pregnant! But there I was, walking out of the bathroom with the bouquet of tests in my shaking hand, standing in the middle of the yellow padded room of my husband’s voice over studio to tell him the news (about the pregnancy, not the president). A padded room felt appropriate to share this in. 

I felt like my whole world had turned upside down. And it was in that moment that I knew, I would do whatever it took to shift the shit that had been living for far too long inside of me - all the beliefs of not being good enough, smart enough, skinny enough, all the conditioning of struggle and suffering and trauma, all the plagiarized programming from my parents and society about who I am and what I could accomplish. Because I REFUSED to pass those beliefs down to my child. My unborn son revealed that spark in me that I CAN do whatever I set my mind to, that ANYTHING is possible, and that, if I summon the courage and have the audacity to go for my dream, I can fan that spark into a f*cking inferno. He gave me something to fight for. 

Three weeks later, I was in the car driving to the program that would indeed change my life and my business. The days were long, the breakthroughs were hard, the homework was exhausting. But at the same time, every break though was like wood chips hitting that spark, every mindset shift and hypnosis fanned that flame. And on the fourth day, we dove into Time Line Therapy, a process combining neuro-linguistic programming and hypnosis that helps to break the gestalt of negative emotions like anger, sadness, fear, guilt, and shame. It’s basically like taking the bottom brick out of your emotional jenga set causing the whole tower to topple. And it’s super effective with people who have PTSD because you don’t associate into the traumatic memory. I’d never experienced it before, but I was ready to try anything to heal from the years of trauma from growing up in an addict household, being physically abused by my ex, sexual assault, even traumas by my own hand, like bulimia and perfectionism. Needless to say, I had a lot of anger that had built up over the years and I was open to anything that could set it free. 

We began. I fought it. I feared it. I didn’t want to look at it. I’d been so used to carrying this anger around for years. And the tears… so many tears... Laura from Jersey coached me through it, “This is for Declan! You got this!” I heard her voice as I unlocked the hidden parts of me I’d buried in shame and fear of them ever seeing the light, and I released them into lessons that I have carried with me to this day. Finally, within just one hour, I was on the other side! It felt like lifetimes (fourteen lifetimes to be specific). I felt like I was awakening from a dream where you don’t yet know what’s real and what was the dream. The release was the most powerful sense of calm and serenity I’d ever felt in my life. It was like a holy awakening of peace had released within me. I did it for me. I did it for Declan.

I walked outside and breathed in the cool, fresh December Vegas air. As I did, this warm breath whinnied onto my shoulder. In what felt like a slow-motion turn, I realized I was standing next to a giant horse. Yes really, a horse outside the Best Western hotel in Vegas. There was something about that moment when I just knew… I was free. I was safe. I felt not only hopeful, but a deep-seated trust in this newfound energy - a trust that felt secure and safe. I’d never felt THAT safe before. As I was walking back inside, I tripped and I fell all the way to the ground. In the past, I would have erupted in a few swear words of anger. And I know this for certain because the day before my program began, I had tripped in that exact same spot and done just that. But this time, it was different. I was different. I felt shock, checked in with myself, and felt fine. I picked myself up, walked up to my room and went to pee. 

As I stood there with blood on the toilet paper and my midwife on the phone, I was surprised, this wave of transcendent calm was still with me. There was no panic. There was just a deep-seated feeling of trust that everything was going to be okay. My midwife imparted her advice - if it got worse, go to the hospital. If that little bit of blood was all there is, then just rest for the next few days. But I still had three days of my program left! I’d come too far to quit now. And something inside me, just knew, “You can make this work. Take the next steps. Just take the next steps,” I felt it calling to me. Whether it was Declan, my Higher Self, God, my soul... for the first time in years I was feeling pulled to do this work. I had to pull myself through first, but there was something inside me that just knew; I was training resiliency again. This pull, this feeling of faith and mission and purpose, pulled me through the final three days of my program. While lying on the side of the conference room propped up on a ton of pillows on the floor. It pulled me through every doctor’s disbelief when they said I couldn’t have my baby naturally. It pulled me through the judgements that other people spouted about being a working mom. It helped me pull my clients out of their limiting beliefs and into their first $10K months. It pulled me $30K out of debt. It pulled me through 24 hours of natural labor. And it pulled me into a 389% increase in my company’s second year, while raising a baby, with no nanny. It pulled me across the ocean with my family, traveling, speaking, and working remotely. And it pulls me still. 

I look back on that early version of me from 2016, the version of me who was so hyper-critical, doubtful, and fearful of what others thought of her, I look back, and just like with bulimia, I don’t even recognize her anymore. I poured literal blood, sweat and tears into building myself into the mompreneur version of me. Creating this person you see before you and I continue to grow into my next level version of me everyday. I had to stop pushing against all the things I didn’t want and start allowing myself to be pulled by the things I did want, did create and still do want and am creating now… knowing, trusting, and having faith that the best is always yet to come.