My Background
I was born the youngest of seven children (we had six girls and one boy), and I would have to say that being the youngest child did not assign me a very powerful role in my family. However, in the last few years, I have actually come to appreciate how much being the youngest of seven benefited me. Looking back, I can see how it began my life long quest to understand who we truly are, what we are capable of, and where the source of our power lies.
Growing up one of the Hanavan girls, gave me an incredible opportunity to develop my powers of observation since there were so many complicated dynamics and interactions between all of us! For as long as I can remember, I have been fascinated with human nature, and what makes us do the things we do, especially when what we are doing does not get us the results we are seeking.
As a young girl, I seemed to have an uncanny ability to know what different members of my family were thinking and feeling. More importantly, I could sense what they were most likely going to do without anyone having to say anything to me. As you might imagine, none of my siblings seemed to appreciate this talent of mine, but my mother certainly found it to be a useful source of information! She always used to say that I would grow up and write a column like Dear Abby, and in many ways she was right…
My mother also used to say that I came out the womb a social worker, and I guess she was right about that too. Most of my professional life has centered around helping clients to achieve their personal and professional goals. When I was in college, I began my career in social work and worked in an adolescent treatment center. After I graduated, I held several positions working with the elderly and administering programs for patients with Alzheimer’s.
A few years later, I went to graduate school and got my masters in clinical social work. I was certified as Gestalt Therapist at The Gestalt Institute of New Orleans and found my true calling counseling individuals and groups. I absolutely loved this training and it fueled my life long interest in the psychology of the human mind and the relationship we have with ourselves, and the world around us. In my work as a social worker, I was trained to evaluate any problem a client was experiencing in the context of their environment. I became very aware that whatever we are experiencing internally is reflected externally in some way in the world outside of us.
For most of my life, I have turned to the energy of nature as a source of inspiration, and one day I realized that the personal relationship we have with our environment and our ability to get our needs met, mirrors the relationship that all of humanity has with the larger natural environment. We are completely dependent on and effected by nature and the natural order. So I reasoned that if the energy of nature is what fuels and sustains us, why not design the environments that we live and work in so that they mirror nature, and can fuel and sustain us in a similar manner? I decided to combine my skills as a therapist with my love of beauty and interior design, and thus, my consulting business was born.
I already possessed an innate talent for creating sacred space and I began teaching my clients how to create an environment inside and outside of them that would support what they were trying to achieve. I studied the energy of color, lighting, and shape, and incorporated eastern principles of interior design. I learned the Chinese Art of Feng Shui, which is a discipline that creates and constructs environments that support the goals of its occupants. It is based on the idea that there is a natural order in the energy of nature that sustains all the rhythms and cycles of life, and ideally, every area of our lives should mirror these cycles of growth and expansion. Using Feng Shui principles, we can recreate the energies of nature in our interior spaces so that they fuel and sustain us, align us with the natural cycles of growth and enable every aspect of our personal and professional lives to thrive.
The more I studied the energy of nature, the more I understood the universal principles of energy that govern our universe. My deepest desire was (and still is) to live in alignment with these universal principles of energy and help others to do the same. I wanted to live a life that was filled with the love, beauty and the incredible power and majesty that I observed in nature.
Slowly my work evolved and I started consulting with both individuals and businesses. I began by teaching my clients to see how everything we see in the external world is a reflection of some part of the interior world inside us. We would use the floor plan and interior design of their home or office as a metaphor for their lives, and many of my clients began implementing changes and moving past issues they had been stuck on for many years. I collaborated with a design team and we would create nurturing, uplifting spaces filled with beauty and light, which were designed to help my clients succeed and ultimately thrive in any area of their lives.
I began speaking and teaching workshops about energy, the natural order and how to live in alignment with it. After a few years, I realized that using our environment as a tool for change, was still working from the outside in, instead of doing what nature does and working from the inside out. I had already spent years observing this tendency of human nature to look for external sources of power to meet its needs, and did not want my work to perpetuate this problem.
I realized that true interior design is working with the interior energy inside of us, which is housed inside our heart, mind and soul. That became the focal point of my work, and what I began to speak and consult about. Eventually I wrote my first book The Energy of Success: Discover the True Nature of Your Power and I have been speaking and consulting about it ever since.
In the fall of 2007, my second book Say Yes to Your Majesty was published. I built on the concepts I introduced in my first book and included specific exercises to help my readers apply these principles to the specifics of their lives. There is nothing more important to me than using the feminine power and grace inside of me to become the change I want to see, and then helping others to do the same. Together, I believe we can create the love, hope, beauty and illumination that so many are seeking in the world today.
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Who am I?