The founder of Simply Celebrate survived severe depression and suicidal thoughts by writing lists of why she loved people. A single breath in meditation became her turning point, a pinprick of light that shifted everything. Now she builds her company around creating small moments of gratitude to push back darkness.
Tell me a time before you got started in celebration and appreciation and your journey to really embodying this and the energy that we all get to see you in.
And Sean, thank you for starting with that, because I typically will try to start with my story, because I think it's important for people when they hear that the name of my company is Simply Celebrate, and they know me now. Sometimes people think like, oh, you must just be one of those naturally happy people, you know, bounds out of bed and balloons in the closet or whatever. And the truth of it is, everything in my life right now is due to a really intense period of depression. I actually, for a few years, just really was focused on how to get off this planet, you know, and I'm so grateful that I never did anything in that way. But I really. And, you know, I think you'll understand this because of our work as coaches, that it's like as I was growing up and into. Into my early 20s, I just had that, like, these voices in the head always telling me, you know, I didn't measure up either. I didn't measure up to what I thought I should be from. From the external world or my own feelings about who I wanted to be in the world. And. And it was this constant living in what was wrong and what was missing about me. And by some huge grace, I started a practice, which I know we're going to talk about later on, a little bit more in depth, but I started an appreciation practice of making lists for people of why I love them. And it was something that just kind of came in from wherever these beautiful things are given to us, to Stewart. And. And I found that when I was immersed in. In love, I didn't feel depressed. So there would be these moments, right? And in a similar way, and this is also, I think, a really important part of the story, I was led to a meditation class. And in that meditation class, if anybody's meditated, you know, you focus on the breath, right? So in breath and out breath. So nice, isn't it? Well, and when I was in the depths of all of those suicidal feelings, I. I was in this meditation class, and on one of the in breaths, I literally heard, I don't want to kill myself right now. And that was huge because it had felt to me like the depression and anxiety was like an iron wall, you know, closing in, closing in. That's really, literally what it felt like. But that one breath and that one moment of, wait a minute, I'm okay in this moment was like a little pinprick of light, you know, and when we're in the dark, right, that tiny pinprick of light is everything. And that became, and still is to this day, 30 some years later. It's a guiding principle for me to both look for and create pinpricks of light.
