When My Sister Died, I Found My True Purpose

What happens when a physical healer discovers that treating the body alone isn't enough? After years of helping patients recover physically while maintaining my own fragile sobriety, I faced a devastating wake-up call that transformed everything.

The moment my sister lost her battle with addiction, something fundamentally shifted in me. No longer could I separate my professional identity as a physical therapist from my personal journey through recovery. The carefully constructed walls between these worlds came crashing down, revealing a truth I'd been avoiding: true healing requires addressing the soul sickness that manifests in our bodies, relationships, and lives.

My journey from doctoral studies to founding Strong Harte Fitness was driven by seeing how the healthcare system discharged patients only 60% healed. Yet even as I built a successful practice, I recognized the same patterns in my clients that I witnessed in recovery rooms - not addiction to substances, but to control, people-pleasing, productivity, and impossible standards. These manifestations were preventing true healing just as effectively as any substance.

For years, I resisted the spiritual aspects of recovery, relying instead on rigid control as my drug of choice. It worked until it spectacularly failed during a personal crisis, teaching me that perfection always collapses in matters of the heart. Only then did I discover that the 12 steps, reframed in trauma-informed, non-religious language, offer powerful tools for anyone suffering from the disconnection and soul sickness of modern life.

This episode takes you through my transformation and offers a glimpse into how these principles can help you break generational patterns, heal from past wounds, and connect more deeply with yourself and others. Whether you're battling addiction or simply feeling disconnected from your purpose, there's something here for you. Ready to explore the infinite power of your light? Listen now and take your first step toward integrated healing.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Truth About Addiction
• 1:23 My Journey as a Physical Therapist
• 4:40 Birth of Strong Heart Fitness
• 7:40 Noticing Soul Sickness in Patients
• 10:40 Sister's Death and Personal Transformation
• 13:35 Modernizing the 12 Steps
• 18:05 Step Six: Character Traits Panel
• 40:25 Closing Song About Breaking Patterns

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome back everybody to the Truth About Addiction.

Speaker 1: 0:03

Today I am releasing a solo episode from my most recent live in-person speaking event, heart Conscious Creators that I just moved from Los Angeles to a suburb outside of Los Angeles, westlake Village, which is very close to where I live, and you guys are gonna hear hear about a 15 minute talk where I share a snapshot of my story and it'll take you from past to present in a really deep and meaningful way in regards to what I thought I was supposed to be doing in the world and what I now know I am meant to be doing in the world. And, as usual, I'm going to ask you guys to like and subscribe, share this episode with somebody who you love who needs to hear it. You can also click the link in the show notes and book a free discovery call with me. I absolutely love to connect with humans, with my listeners, especially when I can look you in the eye. I think it's so important and I hope you guys get something out of this episode. I will catch you soon in the next one.

Speaker 2: 1:23

Meaning and purpose period.

Speaker 1: 1:47

I don't care if you're a stay-at-home parent, if you're a content creator or if you're working a night five. If you want a life that is by design, that is on purpose, where you get to the end of it and you are proud of who you were and what you did, you belong. So a did you belong? So a little bit about me. I am a physical therapist by trade. I am a bestselling author and I'm the founder of Strong Heart Fitness, which is an integrated wellness center for the mind, body and spirit, and I just want to take a few minutes and share a little piece of my story. My story is big and it's long and it's in my book and it's in the gift bags If you want to know the full A to Z. But I'm going to give you a snapshot and I'm going to take you back to when I graduated from physical therapy school. To when I graduated from physical therapy school, which was in 2010. And it was a big deal, not just because I got my doctorate, but because it took me a long time to get that degree.

Speaker 1: 2:54

I originally wanted to be a star. I wanted to sing and dance all over the world and I had a little thing called a drunken alcohol problem. That derailed my plans. I also had no inner template to be able to tolerate failure. You have to be really good at that if you want to be in entertainment. Arguably, you have to be really good at that if you want to do the same called life.

Speaker 1: 3:18

So I went back to school and I played it really safe. School was curated and controlled and I could get an A and that A could lead to my degree and that degree could lead to a job that nobody could take from me. So I come out of graduate school and then a hundred thousand dollars debt and the first job offer I get I was like surely this is going to be the one that I want, cause I was living in New York city, I was teaching dance while I was in school and those two things felt really good and I thought what if I could be the PT to the Allen Ailey Dance Company? And I had an in because my orthopedic professor loved me and he knew the clinical director and I remember going up there to meet her, to give her my resume and there were eight dancers to one therapist and I went over to the therapist and I said are you, the only person of all these patients, and she was saying uh-huh.

Speaker 1: 4:13

You wanted to say this is what you're signing up for, just so you know. And I gave her my resume. But I didn't want the job. So I did come in for an interview because I thought, if this is how I'm going to start my career, where I become really good at time management, I'm out. That's not why I got the degree. I just killed myself to really help people. My husband wanted to come to California. So we moved to California because now I'm like man, this job that I thought was my dream job I'm saying no to. So the world is my oyster, let's go to California. It's got to be near LA just in case I become a star.

Speaker 1: 4:55

And I set out to get a job for a woman who had a business model that was only one-on-one Truly it's one therapist to one patient and that's what I did for three years. I got really good at treating the body and looking at the whole body, top of the head to the tip of the toes. But I was still in an underdeveloped debt and I was still making $33 an hour, totally unsustainable and sidebar, because we're not getting into this part of my story today. My marriage was falling apart and I was separated and I wasn't being financially supported. So I really needed to figure something out and I thought where are all these patients going? They get discharged at 60% Better. They want to run, they want to hike, they want to play tennis, they want to get up from the floor when they're playing with their gray pins about holding on to something or without knee pain. And they're not going to us because insurance decided they had enough care. And so I'd ask them what's your plan after this to get all the way back to full fitness and full function? And they're like I don't know, I'm going to hire a trainer. I guess I'm like oh, I used a trainer before I became a doctor. These trainers have been in me three times as much as me to do this extension of care. And I was like do you guys just want to do that with me? I do that.

Speaker 1: 6:32

And so Strong Heart Fitness was born out of meeting a need in the healthcare market that wasn't being met. So I became a movement expert. I did all these extra classes so I could become a biomechanical wizard. People would come to me. They'd gone in network, they'd gotten as far as they could go and they were still having symptoms. And so I saw a whole person. I looked at their whole body and all the while remember I dropped a bomb earlier, that I had a little drug and alcohol problem that derailed my dreams of being a star. Well, I had to do something about that at some point.

Speaker 1: 7:12

I had a real scare, went to a meeting, hated it, didn't go back for a year and a half, went to another meeting, was like I guess I need to stay. But also I hate these 12 steps and I don't really need them. I just need to not drink and use, or I need to drink and use like a lady. And so I'm living this sober life on the one track and I have this clinic on the other. They're parallel tracks but they're separate, and as I'm treating patients, I have this clinic on the other. They're parallel tracks but they're separate, and as I'm treating patients, I have an hour to spend with people, real time that you don't get with a practitioner in the current healthcare landscape.

Speaker 1: 7:56

I'm noticing that these patients, much like the addicts in the 12-step rooms, are also suffering from what I keep to call soul sickness. What do I mean? Well, they weren't addicted to alcohol or cocaine. They were definitely addicted to other things, like people pleasing productivity, the beauty of body standard, the beauty of body standard, and he was getting in the way of their body healing Whether it was getting in the way of their body healing on a tactical level, because all these other things that they had to do, that they felt called to do, had to go first, and then their exercise program fell away. Poor, because the stress of living out in those patterns was so chronic that they were in a state of inflammation that did not allow their body to heal.

Speaker 1: 8:59

But who was I, doctor of physical therapy, to come in and say, hey, hey, I think you're also suffering from a spiritual malady, want to work on that? I felt like an imposter. What right did I have to say or do that? It bothered me, though. It was like an itch that I couldn't scratch. And then the pandemic happened. Does that feel like a really long time? Wow, the pandemic happened. Doesn't that feel like a really long time? Wow, the pandemic happened.

Speaker 1: 9:29

And at that point I'm in this practice and I have four different practitioners renting space for me All badass women acupuncture, psychotherapy, podiatry. Everybody fled, nobody needed space anymore. So I was in this big studio in Santa Monica by myself, luckily, because I was very movement based. My work translated over the computer so I became really good at reversing movement and being the mirror. You know I'd be like and move your right side and it's always my left but it felt empty, literally and spiritually felt empty in there. I was getting uncomfortable with the physical side being what I did in the world.

Speaker 1: 10:13

And then, on March 13th of 2022, I got the phone call that I was dreading for years, because I'm not the only addict in my family. In fact, everyone in my immediate family is an addict. I'm just cycle breaker. I'm the one breaking the generational trauma of mental illness, emotional cycles of dysfunction and substance abuse. My sister was suffering for so long. I did everything right, I did everything wrong to try and wake her up, shake her sober, drag her to meetings, and she tried, she really tried, but on March 13th she didn't make it and that day Samantha, the clinician, the body expert, died too. I don't remember anything about that day except wailing on the floor of the Austin airport with my husband.

Speaker 1: 11:25

We got back on the plane to go to LA and then I had to turn around and go to New Jersey. Handful of briefs, apparently. I turned to him and I said writing a fucking book. Well, I wasn't kidding. I set out to write a book. At the time I had no idea what the book was gonna be about. I just knew that that story about my sister was the final stake in the round, the story of all the stories. That was enough for me to say I've lived through some really hard things and I'm ready to talk about that and I'm ready to help other people who also might be struggling. But then the book became something else, because I got a publishing team and we started to get in the weeds. What are you trying to do with the book? Oh, I'm trying to help as many people as possible. Great, what helped you? Well, I told you guys, I hated those 12-step meetings I wasn't kidding and for five years in recovery I really widened up sobriety.

Speaker 1: 12:32

What does that mean? It means I physically abstained, but I was spiritually bankrupt Because every tool they were trying to give to me I couldn't cure Because it felt unsafe to me. I grew up in a house where people leave a guy. You're a fool, academia is everything and the only person you can count on is yourself. And now these 12 steps are asking me to dismantle my entire belief system and get down with God. You want me to believe that there's some guy in the sky, with a white beard, obviously, who's going to wave a wand and strike me sane when I'm acting crazy Fuck you.

Speaker 1: 13:15

That's how I felt, and for five years in recovery I didn't need any of that because I relied on control. Control was my drug of choice. If I could just control the world around me, the people, places and things in it, I was gonna be okay, and it worked until it did, because the thing about perfection is that it collapses in matters of the heart. And in that marital crisis, nothing I said and nothing I did could fix it. So I hit rock bottom. Rock bottom is spiritual, it's not physical. It's a place where you don't want to die, but you could no longer go on living the way that you've been living.

Speaker 1: 14:02

And in that beautiful window of time, a woman came in my life and said what if we worked the steps on your marriage? That's interesting. What do you mean? Well, instead of powerlessness over alcohol and drugs, you're powerless over your husband, your marriage, past resentments that carried over into the front end of your relationship, the future, whether you guys are going to be together again and suddenly this stuff started to make sense to me. And I go through the steps in this way and I have this absolute breakthrough at step nine, which is maybe an amends, and she said have you ever made amends to yourself? I'm sorry, I've never heard of such a thing. It hadn't occurred to me ever. And finally, by having a way to clear the shame and to arrest the critical voice that was taking over my life, that kept saying this is what you get for what you did, I could hear my intuition. She's the one that said you should start a business that's movement-based, and she's the one who said I'm writing a fucking book. And she's the one who said oh, this book isn't just a memoir, this book is a movement. Who said, oh, this book isn't just a memoir, this book is a movement?

Speaker 1: 15:27

This book is my attempt at taking 12 steps of recovery that were written almost 100 years ago and bringing them to you. Fight folks who are sitting in these chairs, but they're not antiquated and they're not religious and they're not patriarchal. They're modern and they're trauma, religious and they're not patriarchal. They're moderate and they're trauma-informed. So every chapter of my book corresponds to one of the steps.

Speaker 1: 15:51

What does it mean to be powerless. And once we know that and we see the unmanageability of what we're trying to control, that we can, what do we have power over? Can we come to believe, in any given situation, that there is a different part of us than the part that is showing up, the hyper-controlling part, the self-critical part that could restore us to a sense of safety? What if that was God? Can we clear away our resentments? Can we take a look at our character traits and when we're acting out on them Because we got triggered by something and redirect that from a liability to an asset?

Speaker 1: 16:35

That's tonight's topic. Can we learn how to make an amends, not just to other people but to ourselves, and then can we amend our behavior going forward? Can we take a daily inventory of what went well today, when you guys get home and you hit your head on the pillow? What went well, what could have gone better, what were the ways that you lived in alignment with your ideal self, what were the blessings of the day and what are your intentions for tomorrow? Can you take a little time for meditation, prayer, whatever that means to you in a non-religious way, to get still, to stop being so busy, to stop serving everybody else except for yourself. And when you've replenished your cup can you be of service to someone who needs you. Those are the 12 steps.

Speaker 1: 17:36

Tell me there isn't a person in this room that can't benefit from integrating them into the fabric of their lives. I'm going to leave you, guys, with my favorite quote by Brene Brown. Maybe you've read some of her work. She's a vulnerability superstar and she says owning our story is hard, but it is not nearly as difficult as running from it. Embracing our vulnerabilities is risky, but not nearly as dangerous as giving up on love, connection and joy. Only when we are brave enough to explore the dark will we know the infinite power of our light. Thank you, guys, so much. Ah, so that's a little bit about me and why you're here, and we have two panels tonight and we're going to do the first one in a second.

Speaker 1: 18:52

So it's June 2025. And I told you this is my ninth event, right? I did a few of these at the end of last year and as we rolled into 2025, I thought how convenient that there's 12 months in the years. There's 12 chapters in my book. There's 12 size. Then I want to break to the world. I can correspond each step with one of the months. So we're at June, six months of the year, step six what the heck is step six? Well, in traditional recovery, it's all about your character defects. You can see why I want to modernize the language. I do not think we are defective in our nature. I think that every person sitting here has character traits, things that make you uniquely who you are, and they can either be viability or an asset at any given time, and that is contingent on how you were raised, cultural conditioning, how much complex trauma you had, how much work you've done on yourself, how much sleep you got, whether you're hungry or not, whether your kids are acting out or not.

Speaker 1: 20:05

Okay, this is just real life, and so today the conversation with the panelists is going to be getting into the weeds, about times where parts of their character went sideways and how they became more conscious, not just in the moment, to course correct, but going forward so that they can stay connected to themselves and their truest self and the people they love, because that's what this is about. So let's welcome up our first two guests. No-transcript no-transcript.

Speaker 2: 40:22

I turn my back and hit my head against the wall To meet a crucifix to take me to my knees. I'm whipping my mistakes to jump over the grief, breaking the circuit, making it worth it. Oh, sick and tired of the voice inside my head never good enough, it's leaving me for dead. But perfection's just a game of make-believe. Gotta break the pattern, find a new reprieve, breaking the circuit, making it worth it.

Speaker 3: 41:13

I am ready to make a change. I am bigger than my pain. There's no deep inside. I got left aside.

Speaker 2: 41:28

I can be brave and afraid at the same time. Practice self-compassion start to calm my mind. I can be brave and afraid at the same time. Practice self-compassion starts to calm my mind, taking tiny steps to loving all of me. Just the process, cause it's gonna set me free, breaking the circuit.

Speaker 3: 41:50

Making it worth it. Oh, I am ready to make a change. I am bigger than my pain. There's no deep inside. I got the the life. I got the the life. Gotta gotta gotta break it or fake it till we make it. Gotta gotta gotta break it. Come on, one, two, three. I am ready to make a change. I am bigger than my pain. There's no deep inside. I got nothing like. I am ready to make a change. I am bigger than my pain. There's no deep inside. I got this life.