Hatching Hatch

Two Mays ago I ran my first half-marathon. My body was lit­er­al­ly falling apart, but I did­n’t know or under­stand it yet. Some­how, by the pow­er of my pride on the line and the knowl­edge that my moth­er was hold­ing her breath for the entire 13.1 miles, I crossed the fin­ish line.

Don’t get me wrong, I was thrilled to have fin­ished and my medal is still proud­ly hang­ing in my home. How­ev­er, I real­ly beat myself up men­tal­ly about how I did. At the time I had absolute­ly no con­cept of the chaos with­in and could­n’t under­stand why it had been such a strug­gle (now I look back and haven’t the fog­gi­est clue how I fin­ished at all). I imme­di­ate­ly start­ed plot­ting for my next race and thought about what I could change to per­form bet­ter (read: make it look a lit­tle bit less like I was dying whilst run­ning). I start­ed look­ing at races right about the time that my body real­ly and tru­ly broke down and I was swept off into a whirl­wind of hos­pi­tals, tests, trav­el­ing, learn­ing and grow­ing that has yet to stop.

Exact­ly a year lat­er, I received an offi­cial let­ter con­grat­u­lat­ing me for qual­i­fy­ing for long-term dis­abil­i­ty. It rocked me to the core and took me sev­er­al days and a lot of self reflec­tion to accept the fact that a body could go from run­ning 13.1 miles to being declared as legal­ly dis­abled in a mat­ter of 365 days. As a way of cop­ing, I shared that I was going to set a new mile­stone in May of 2013. I did­n’t know what I would do — I thought I would walk a 5K or start paint­ing again or write a big, spe­cial blog post.

Instead, I start­ed a business.

Friends, I’d like to for­mal­ly intro­duce you to the new love of my life: Hatch Health and Happiness!

My busi­ness is up and run­ning — I already work with clients all over the Unit­ed States and have a real-deal fan­cy busi­ness card to prove it!

The name Hatch was orig­i­nal­ly an acronym — Help Adapt­ing To Chang­ing Health- but it has mor­phed into the con­cept that we are nev­er real­ly start­ing from scratch. When you are diag­nosed with an aller­gy or dis­ease, dis­cov­er a food sen­si­tiv­i­ty, become frus­trat­ed with your end­less weight loss bat­tle or throw your hands up and sur­ren­der to stress, it can feel like you have to com­plete­ly start again to feel bet­ter. Change is scary, and even more so when you do it alone. I help my clients learn to hatch from with­in and make lifestyle and dietary changes to reclaim their health and happiness.

I’ve been in that dark and ter­ri­fy­ing bot­tom of the bar­rel. It was­n’t fun. Could­n’t find a darn uni­corn anywhere.

So I made a choice to make a change.

I chose to re-focus my life’s purpose.

I chose to pay my jour­ney forward.

I chose to go back to school and become a health coach.

And now, with first-day-of-school-jit­ters, I’m ready to share it all with you.

So, friends.

Deep breath

With­out fur­ther ado, allow me to for­mal­ly intro­duce you to my business:

www.hatchhealthhappiness.com