My Story

-Restoring HOPE to Hopeless Health Situations-

Hey there! Thanks for stopping by!

I wanted to share a bit about myself for those of you curious as to why I do what I do now as a coach. Those things are important to me. 🙂

First, I’m a wife to my absolute best friend. We reconnected after our first marriages failed and were a big part of eachothers healing process. I’m so thankful for his support and love every single day. We have 3 tiny humans, Logan, Liam + Maddison. They are my biggest life achievements and I’m so thankful I can work from home with them and never miss a moment!

I’m an extremely stubborn human which has lead to my survival through some of life’s biggest trials. There’s nothing quite like almost dying that makes a person want to live. That’s where my passion to help others live their best life comes from…more on that in a minute. I smile a lot which gives me smile all the smile wrinkles. I’d say I’m more of an extrovert but I keep my close circle very small. Now, I know you clicked on the “my story” tab for a reason…you want the nitty gritty. You want the truth. You want to hear about my past, my struggles, my transformation and how I got to where I am now. Well…you asked for it…so here we go.

I grew up in a small town in northern California with an awesome family. Life consisted of going to a Christian school, church on Sundays, potlucks and playing in the creek. For the most part I was a pretty sheltered kid, which I can really appreciate now. Life was good. My family was full of love. I learned the importance of work ethic, team work and I watched my parents in love and loving doing life together. We were happy with our hand-me-downs and thrift store finds because we were rich in each other.

Everything changed on my 11^th birthday, June 18, 1998. I had softball practice an hour away that day, so to make it special, my dad took me on his motorcycle and planned a pizza date for us after practice. I was SO excited! The warm breeze felt amazing. My dad taught me the cool motorcycle wave you do to other motorcycle riders in passing. He sang Garth Brooks at the top of his lungs in his country twang. It was magical. On the way home however, we were hit head on by a drunk driver in an old Ford Truck. Our bodies were thrown 30-feet from the point of impact and we were immediately knocked unconscious. We were both medi-flighted to seperate trauma centers with a fatal prognosis; neither of us expected to survive the night. I don’t remember much about that night, but my last memory was of me wrapping my arms around my daddy’s waste and us exchanging “I love you’s”. The road ahead of us was rough. I was in a coma and on life support for one week with brain swelling, multiple fractures in my left femur, and a completely shattered shin from being crushed between the truck and our motorcycle. Miraculously, I was showing signs of improvement with each day. Slowly I came out of my coma and was eventually transferred home to a hospital bed. My dad also made it through the night, and while he was showing signs of improvement, his coma was lasting longer than mine did.

July 5, 1998. I’ll never forget the details of the day when my mom walked in my room to talk to me and my brother…followed by our pastor, aunts and uncles, and our cousins who were living with us at the time. Her eyes were bloodshot. She looked so sick. Her face wrinkled with worry lines, she held our hands and looked down trying to speak the words she wished with all her heart weren’t true. She looked into our innocent eyes…”Your daddy has gone to be with Jesus.” Tears filled the house. No one understood what happened. Guilt. Consumed me. My hero, my beast of a dad who towered over everyone at 6’7 was gone. His laughter and sarcasm would no longer be heard down the hallway. As you can imagine…my world was crushed. My heart was broken. My mind and soul were so confused…why him and not me? We were in the same accident on MY birthday that he made special for me by taking me on his motorcycle. WHY…it was heavy on my 11 year old heart for a long time. Somehow as it does, time went on…and we tried to take steps forward with the beautiful memories we had of him.

It took one year of 7 intense surgeries, metal screws and plates, painful therapy and lots of prayer to get me on my feet and walking again. By God’s grace and miraculous healing, my injuries were healed, and body restored in the year following the accident. Throughout this year of healing, my passion for healthcare really grew. We found out from my dad’s autopsy that his death was due to a malpractice case from one of the nurses who was caring for him. 100% preventable. While difficult to swallow, this fueled my fire to prevent another family from going through something like this. I myself had my own positive and negative experiences with home nurses, hospital doctors, and several specialists in my healing journey. I knew my calling was to encourage others through their low moments in life and help them get to a new place of optimal health and joy. It was at this point in my life that I decided I was going into the medical field…yes, at 11 years old.

Fast forward to my freshman year of college. I made a comeback with softball and was playing my first year of college softball while starting nursing school at a 4 year college in San Diego. While all my advisors told me I couldn’t do both…as per true Jessica fashion, I said… “Watch me”, always with a smile of course. J I always was health conscious. I chose the whole wheat options over white flour, I ate chicken breast, turkey meat, fruit, cottage cheese…tried all the special diets to try and stay healthy…to get “skinny”. On the outside I was the smiley energetic young woman that seemed to have it all together and tons of friends. Behind closed doors…I had several anxiety attacks. I struggled with chest pain and numbness down my left arm frequently. Most nights I was kept awake with horrendous stomach pain and a bloated stomach that made me look 6 months pregnant. My hormones were a friggen’ MESS. My doctor told me at 19 years old that I had the estrogen levels of a 55 year old woman. The testing continued…”Jessica, we think you might have a brain tumor, you need a brain scan. Let’s send you for blood work…and more blood work…and more blood work…You need to see an endocrinologist and a gastroenterologist for further studies.” Meanwhile…my symptoms got worse. I had chronic acid reflux. Everything I ate came back up. The doctor recommended birth control to fix my hormones… “but I don’t NEED birth control” I reiterated…but she insisted anyways. So, I tried it…I felt HORRIBLE. My digestive system got much worse. I was SO tired. My anxiety attacks increased. The madness continued. 4 years later I graduated college with a Bachelor’s in Nursing that educated me on all the possible illnesses I had, and in my mind I KNEW I had a new one every day. My symptoms persisted and I NEVER got a straight answer as to what was wrong with me. I was exhausted. I was scared. I felt like I was NEVER GOING TO BE NORMAL AND HEALTHY EVER AGAIN. This was the reality I was living in.

Right after college graduation, I married my boyfriend of 3 years who was a Spanish basketball player. Everything seemed like a fairytale. We moved to Spain where he pursued his basketball career and I went from the overly busy, driven, life is crazy independent woman to a stay at home wife in a different country. My symptoms worsened…and I had all the time in the world to think about it. At this point, Western Medicine was epically failing me and I knew it was up to me to figure out how to heal myself. This is when I really dug into studying and researching different integrative and holistic health modalities. I tried hundreds (literally) of different supplements, acupuncture, chiropractic, homeopathy, Ayurveda medicine, several different dietary approaches, the list goes on. Nothing gave me significant relief. It wasn’t until I started researching and trying food-grade Chinese herbs that my healing mind & body started happening. Within 6 months, I was a completely different person. I thought this was the answer I was looking for. While my health started to improve, my marriage shortly after deteriorated out of the blue. 4 years into marriage, my husband at the time came home one day and decided he didn’t want to be married anymore and had no reason other than he didn’t love me. I begged and pleaded for him to change his mind. I sought counseling, I bought all the books I could find on saving your marriage, I prayed constantly through my breakdowns, I gave all I could, but it wasn’t enough to change his mind. A couple months later our divorce was filed and I once again felt like my world blew up in my face. I felt like an epic failure to God and everyone around me, like I had a scarlet letter on my chest as a divorced 26 year old. I did everything “right”. I saved myself for marriage, we dated for 3 years and were friends first, we seemed to be on the same page on important issues…how could this happen? While I am a huge promoter of doing absolutely EVERYTHING you can to save your marriage, looking back I can see that the Lord rescued me and allowed for my divorce to happen in order for me to experience life and love at a level I never knew was possible. For years I had heard that I wasn’t pretty enough, skinny enough, successful enough, sexy enough…and while I had always been a confident woman my whole life, after a while these words got to me and crushed my spirit. I began to believe the lies and my body became swollen with shame, disgust, and sadness. I was at my heaviest in the last year of that marriage. I counted calories like nobody’s business, I spent hours at the gym, but not a pound would budge. Emotionally…I was starving.

So, I went through the grieving process of my divorce. The abandonment and trust issues I felt brewing. I’m SO thankful to have my relationship with Jesus. I truly don’t know how people get through hardships without a supernatural connection to get them through on the days they feel like they can’t even breathe. The Lord kept telling me to trust Him, to PRAISE Him through this process. So, I did. I started learning again what it meant to love myself again. To be confident in the woman the Lord created me to be. I dug deep to learn how to be my best self and what I really wanted from a relationship. I got my own apartment, found a new job, hit the gym as therapy, and nourished my body. The pounds fell off. I was truly learning to be happy again. My heart was being restored. And then out of nowhere…a tall, blue-eyed blonde blast from the past Spartan of a man walked into my life and I knew all the pain I went through had a purpose. It was going to be used to help heal this man’s heart. Little did I know that my future husband had been through a very similar heartbreak that I had gone through. Without my experience, we never would have connected at the authentic and brutally honest level that we did, which cultivated something beautiful.

Fast forward 2 years later and I was again married but this time it was different. I was happier than ever, I was happy with who I was and so was my new husband. We were independently strong in who we were which made our relationship EPIC. To make things more exciting, we were expecting our first baby together. Our baby boy was born on December 14, 2015. He was perfection. I LOVE mommy hood. But, I also had a new set of struggles. Pregnancy killed my lower back. I found out I had a moderate-severe degenerative disk in my low back and wasn’t given many solutions to deal with the pain. The pain was debilitating. I couldn’t even bend over to lay my son down in his crib. I KNEW something had to change. This is when I saw Elizabeth Hartke’s results from the 22 Minute Hard Corps test group after having her first child. I had no idea who Liz was at the time, nor did I know that she would end up being my mentor, incredible friend, business and life inspiration, and long lost sister I never knew I always wanted! I knew this program was going to be what got me back in shape after baby. This was in March 2016. I bought my first challenge pack, got my hubs on board, and spread the word to all my friends and family about what I was doing. THIS is when I saw the potential in Beachbody coaching. I was reminded of my desire to help others transform their life and be with them in their darkest moments that I had since I was 11 years old. I charged forward and haven’t looked back!

Our team has exploded. Within 2 years of coaching, I was able to match my RN income and trade in my scrubs for yoga pants when I became a full time work from home mom with my kiddos. Recently, we’ve been able to move our family out of California to north Idaho to raise our kids with the morals and values important to us and my husband was able to leave his career in corrections and start his own construction and concrete company. ALL OF THIS was only possible BECAUSE OF COACHING. It gives me chills still…I had no idea this was even a thing! MOST importantly I’ve been able to help more people with this platform than I ever did as an RN or with my own health coaching business.

All of the hardships…all of the turmoil, the millions of tears I cried, all the questions of WHY…it was all worth it for me to be where I am now. For me to be able to hold a friend’s hand who just lost a loved one or who is going through a painful divorce, and to be able to say, “I see you, I hear you, and I feel you. You can get through this, I promise and I will help you”. How powerful is that? I wouldn’t be able to connect and relate with people in their darkest moments if I hadn’t been in the trenches myself. While I may have a completely different perspective and a few more grey hairs than the average 33 year old, I wouldn’t change it. My story has shaped me into who I am today and I’m pretty happy about that.

My mission is to now share the skills and tools I’ve learned along my journey with everyone around me whose willing and wanting to learn. Most people look at Beachbody coaching as a superficial and temporary fad. I’m sad for those people, because they totally missed the mark. I have an incredible platform now to impact and reach more people than I ever thought possible without those people paying ME a single penny. Yet, I have the potential to earn 7 figures in the next 5-6 years all by working from home with my family from wherever we want to be in the world. I’d say that’s pretty bad ass. Plus, I am not just a “Beachbody Coach”. I’m a health/fitness/business/life coach! I get to be as creative as I want and help people in a way that fits ME! Priceless! I’m a lifer…you’ll see me as the 85 year old Beachbody coach with a 6 pack, you just watch! 🙂

Thank you for reading my novel. I hope you feel like you know me and my heart just a little bit more today. If my passion and mission resonates with you and you’re looking for a support system to grow into the best version of you, hit me up. I’d LOVE to chat with you and see how I can support you to live your life to the fullest.

Remember, if you aren’t operating at 100%, everyone around you suffers. Do our world a favor and live in your purpose with all your heart. Be fearless in pursuit of what sets your soul on fire.
Love,

Jessica

– Your Health Patriot-