The Decision to Heal: Pathways from Suffering to Love

Is healing a decision? We think it is. Within the pages of this book we take you on a journey of 6 unique pathways from suffering to love. We understand the courage it takes to make the decision to want to feel better and have happier, healthier experiences in your life. We also know and believe there is an abundance of support if you’re open to receiving it. This book is our collective mission to save lives, transform limiting ideas and inspire your drive to be better. This book is for those who still suffer in silence. Healing doesn’t have to be done alone, so let this book and our stories be a guide to supporting you in your own decision to heal.

Nicole Smith is a born and raised California girl currently transplanted on the Coast of Virginia. She is a proud wife, mom, foodie and ocean lover! Nicole is also a Military Veteran turned Life Coach and Mental Wellness Advocate. She suffered from an incredibly low self-esteem much of her life and found it impossible to love herself in order to feel "good enough" in just about every relationship. While serving our country, she silently fought a battle to remain in control of the anxiety and depression that overcame her. Finally hitting rock bottom was the breakthrough where her own transformation journey began. It was her blessing in disguise and led her to discovering her true self-worth and how to heal her life. Her path to healing transformed her so deeply that she decided to retire from her successful military career. Connecting to a new purpose, she created Navigate Your Freedom, and is now serving the military community in a new way by helping women who are burnt out from the military lifestyle to become just as committed to themselves as they are their country.

Katelyn M. Flores - mover, shaker, and light seeker. Katelyn is currently living in the Northeast United States with her family and beloved fur babies. She loves creativity, all things "woo" and brings a healthy dose of sass to the table. It wasn't always that way! She is a Health and Life Coach now, AND she has walked the walk. Katelyn suffered from obesity, bullying, domestic violence, self-harm, low self-esteem, depression, and even suicidal thoughts for most of her life. Overcoming a lifetime of adversity and setbacks, Katelyn boldly up leveled her life to new heights through consistent reinvention of herself, her belief systems and the resuscitation of her powerful intuition. With fierce love and undeniable vigor and grit, she turned her broken heart into a healing vessel. In 2018, Katelyn left 13 years of social work to fearlessly follow her dreams and pursue her passion of helping people in a more intentional way, and Free Your Tangled Mind, LLC was born. Through her incredible work as a healer, she has developed a reputation as the "helper of the light seekers" and assists people in navigating through food obsession and emotional eating to lose weight, gain clarity around the root cause of their cyclical behavior, release their insecurity and begin to live a life free from obsession and pain.Do you want to MAKE. SHIFT. HAPPEN. too? To work with Katelyn directly please visit: www.freeyourtangledmin.com I fb.me/freeYTM I email: freeyourtangledmind@gmail.com

Josh Friedberg is a writer, essayist, scholar, music historian, tutor, storyteller, teacher, singer, and songwriter who lives in Chicago. He has won multiple awards from the Illinois Woman's Press Association's (IWPA) annual Communications Contests, including first place designations for the personal essays ("On Crying and Music") and online feature articles ("Racializing Rock: The '60s and the White Sounds of 'Pet Sounds'"), categories. He has published over twenty articles, including as a columnist at the Good Men Project website and contributor to PopMatters, the web magazine on popular culture. He holds a master's degree in English from Northeastern Illinois University and has also been a radio DJ. He recently designed and taught an English course on contemporary writing about music that challenges conventional narratives of music and culture. He is proudly Autistic, which informs all of his work, as well as living with Bipolar Disorder, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), anxiety, and other disabilities, and he hopes his story inspires others to channel their creativity and know that they are not alone!

Teresa Greco is an educator and educational technologies consultant from Toronto, Ontario, Canada. She is the editor and senior writer at two national Canadian magazines and an author of teaching and learning resources for one of Canada's leading educational publishers. Teresa is also a wife and proud mother of two incredible children, a happiness coach, public speaker, and reiki practitioner. She has completed her Master's Degree in Education, with specializations in Technological Literacy and Special Education. An educator of over 20 years, Teresa has taught across Canada supporting students, parents, and teachers in various capacities. As an author and happiness coach, Teresa does public speaking, holds workshops, and mentors others about embracing, honoring, loving, and celebrating their true authentic self and achieving their own personal happiness and fulfillment. Teresa is working towards the launch of her own book entitled "Steps to True Happiness" and is spreading light and love with others on her website: www.teresa gr eco.ca, Instagram page @teresagreco_stepstohappiness and Facebook page, Steps To True Happiness With Teresa Greco.You can also connect with Teresa by email at stepstotruehappiness@gmail.com in regard to speaking engagements, workshops, and services.

Julie Raborn is a Life Coach and Self-love Coach living on the freshwater coast of Lake Michigan in Traverse City, Michigan. She loves writing, traveling, hiking, kayaking, yoga, copious amounts of laughter and coffee, loving and inspiring people, and a deep love for all thing's scarves, vests and beanie caps! Throughout years of bullying and physical abuse, and self-destructive thoughts, beliefs and behaviors, she had a painful breaking point knowing she could no longer tolerate this way of being. She was suffering from extremely low self-esteem, no belief in herself or her worth, and was in a vicious cycle of self-loathing. She made the independent, powerful choice to leave her corporate job, sell her home and move away from everything and everyone she knew to live where she'd dreamt to live all her life-in Traverse City. She made a decision to have her own back and pave her path of deep exploration and healing through coaching and self-love. She chose to live by soul-led desires instead of staying stuck in fear, self-loathing and believing she was not good enough in any capacity. She discovered her pain and experiences are her gift to help others. She provides transformational coaching with the knowing there is another side to suffering and supports others to get there; the magic is on the other side of fear. She inspires others into action to finally feel better, create experiences they desire, and liberate themselves from negative self-limiting thoughts, beliefs and behaviors.

Kristin Larsen is a Transformational Health Coach who has certification in health coaching, life coaching and mastery transformation coaching method.Kristin lives in Ontario, Canada, is a father of two magnificent (enough as they are) children and husband to an unconditionally loving, supportive wife.He values and enjoys powerful conversations, smiling, laughing, personal growth, physical activity, nature, family, connection, creativity, helping others, witnessing the joy and creation by others. He helps guide men and women to change their habits, create new mindsets so they can embrace an empowered way of living into what they envision.He assists others to establish confidence in their body and mind so they can have clarity in their life, freedom in their thoughts, and take power in their actions.In his practice he places focus on identifying the root cause of what is preventing or holding someone back from having what they want in their health and life.He places importance on gradual long term habit change and accepted invitations of new mindsets to form new ways of thinking and being. He has found this helped others to create new possibilities to take empowered action towards what they want.If you would like to follow, connect or learn more about Kristin please visit: www.klhealthcoaching.com