My grandparents taught ballroom dancing in Northern Virginia. Once a month they threw a party, cooked all the food themselves, and let their students practice where the only judge was the music. One of those students owned a daycare and could no longer meet evolving health department regulations within her school kitchen.She asked my grandfather whether he would mind making lunch for the kids. He said yes, the way he said yes to his community as a matter of course. Fairfax Food Service was incorporated in 1970.
My grandmother announced that if this family was going into food, she was retiring. My mother became the second CEO. My father bought the company from her and became the third. I grew up climbing onto a stool to count chicken patties onto sheet pans, and eventually I succeeded my father and led the company for seven years.
I was never a foodie. What created the passion within my 20-year career was a combination of roots, people, and the kids we served nutritious meals to daily. It was meaningful to me that we were ensuring lunch was safe, enjoyable, and reliable. I was good at the job. When my brother and I took over the business as co-owners and executives, we quickly found massive challenges to overcome.
After two years as CEO, we won the county's top health department award against thousands of other nominated businesses. On the same day we were presented with the award, COVID paused the country for two weeks, and the pandemic ravaged the business overnight. Our doors never closed, and through our divide-and-conquer mentality, we fought for the company's 50 year legacy.
I was doing all of that while fighting for my sanity.
I had survived postpartum psychosis once, after my second son. When I got pregnant with twins, my psychiatrists told me to expect the psychosis again and stopped short of predicting how bad.
I went to an outpatient program to get evaluated. That first night they told me they had no beds, and I looked fine to them.
Per their advice, I returned the next morning to be evaluated for an outpatient program. They asked their questions, did an interview, excused themselves, and came back to say they could not let me leave. I had lost ten pounds in a week. My body was shutting down.
While in treatment, the doctor placed me on a black-labeled antidepressant without my knowledge of the industry warning label. It altered my personality. For about a year I was a completely different person.
When I asked how to come off it, every answer was the same. No safe protocol existed. People were dying on the way off this drug, and the system had nothing to offer me except more of the drug.
So I built the protocol myself. Pharmaceutical mapping had just reached the market, a cheek swab that reads how your own brain metabolizes a medication. I went out of state to find a psychiatrist progressive enough to order it, learned exactly how toxic that drug was to my system, and designed my own withdrawal.
I came off it with blisters up my arms. Four kids at home. An au pair who depended on me. A family business I had just taken over as CEO, broken in ways none of us had seen coming.
I remember thinking, I am literally the CEO of this psych ward. Several years later, that moment inspired the name for the LLC of my coaching business.
I knew how to be a CEO. I just applied it to my own mental health.
In these huge systems, we have to advocate for ourselves. We forget that we are the experts on what we need and who we are.
I essentially had two jobs. Being CEO of the company got the business back on track. Being CEO of my mental health saved my life and my family.
As my strength and clarity grew, I became curious about helping other people through what I had been through.
My first experience with coaching started with a TikTok video during COVID. I found a person who would work with you by the hour and spent the hour with her. It was eye-opening.
Coaching programs started showing up in my algorithm after that, and when I saw them, I thought, " This is it. This is what people need when they are ready to move forward, instead of staying stuck in rumination.”
So I evaluated ten schools and picked the one with the most hours and the heaviest workload, which surprised me. I had spent my whole life believing I disliked school, when the truth was that I never fit the standard student box. iPEC gutted me. They are exceptional at walking a person through learning and unlearning. Then I kept going, into attachment theory, communication, conflict, and trauma awareness.
I remember one point I was doing therapy and thinking, I don’t need therapy anymore. I was in a space where I was really frustrated because I did feel like I needed resources. None of the resources seemed to be built for the space that I was in. I had released anger. I had released sorrow, but there was an undertone where I wasn’t fully reconnected.
Going to school for the coaching credential made me happy in a way that was sustainable even when I wasn’t doing it. Just being in the process of it made me feel joy.
People started coming to me, and I coached them for years at no cost, because someone’s time deserves protection and I refused to price something I was still learning to do well. The results were astounding. What I had proven in my own life was now proven in theirs.
That happiness highlighted how hard the other path had become. I had chosen it because it was the most stable option available when I was pregnant with my first child, and the reasons had nothing to do with who I was anymore. I kept telling myself the same thing: if this was where I was supposed to be, as many times as we have fixed this, it would not keep happening. Or it would feel rewarding outside of standing in front of the community.
The evidence gave me the courage to leave. My final day as CEO was January 1, 2026.
And now, I know I am exactly where I’m supposed to be. It took shedding everything I thought defined me to realize that my greatest achievement wasn't saving a business; it was saving myself.
