My full story.

Hello there, I’m Sharon.

I’m a wife, mother of 2 girls, former healthcare consultant, deeply obsessed with neuroscience, quantum physics and laughter, and a woman who has successfully transformed a life of high-functioning survival into a life of thriving!

While I have so many blessings to be grateful for, I have also dealt with a lot of crisis in my life. My nervous system only ever knew what survival mode felt like, even in the midst of healing (too deep too fast).

It all started when my father was diagnosed with cancer when I was just 6 months old, and I lost him 10 months later. What followed was 15 years in a home where safety and steady, calm connection simply weren't available. I learned to survive, but my nervous system learned to live in fear, hypervigilance, and hyper-performance. It stayed in that state most of my life. What I wanted more than almost anything was to feel safe enough to let loose and trust. I never fully got to.

Later, I built a career as a Vice President in healthcare consulting, working with hospitals across the country while raising two daughters with my husband, moving across states, and homeschooling our kids. That was plenty in itself, but on top of that, I was in the midst of a decade of back-to-back family emergencies, the hardest being my brother's terminal brain cancer diagnosis. I spent eight years trying to help save his life, still performing, still holding everything together on the outside. In April 2022, we lost six family members, including my brother and my stepfather, three weeks later. The next year, my mother was diagnosed with cancer too. Survival mode was living up to its name and my nervous system deepened is pattern of familiarity with every blow.

By then my body was sounding every alarm it had, but I kept pushing, because that's what survival mode teaches you to do, and because I'd spent over a decade proving I could function through anything. I didn't know how to stop until I had a full nervous system breakdown. That breakdown stopped me in my tracks and forced me to reexamine my life.

I had to learn, slowly and consistently, what true safety actually felt like in my body. And that I did through slow, subtle and consistent practice. That daily practice created an excellent and much needed baseline that started to make life feel more stable despite outside chaos still swirling around me. But here’s the thing…I didn’t want to stop at “stable.” I wanted more out of life! I wanted to THRIVE!

I figured it would be an easy thing to obtain, but that’s when an unexpected roadblock presented itself. After decades of living in survival mode, my body had never known and therefore couldn’t trust what joy and expansion felt like. When I began to experience those good feelings, I subconsciously sabotaged them until I was right back in my familiar pattern of survival. Ironically, my nervous system was blocking my joy due to its loyal protection.

That's when it all clicked!

My nervous system wouldn’t let my body expand into joy and aliveness without first building the capacity (nervous system trust) to hold something different. Once I woke up to that realization, I knew I’d have to find a way to introduce joy and aliveness to my nervous system in a safe way.

So I went to Costa Rica on a retreat built entirely around play as the pathway to healing. The play that I did there made me feel stronger and more whole than any other healing modality or achievement ever had. What’s more, my world began to expand immediately: new friendships, new opportunities, and a kind of joy I'd never had room for before.

This is why Thrive Nervous System exists. The world is pushing regulation and that is a great thing because it’s the foundation of your life. However, regulation is only the floor, not the ceiling. But regulation was never meant to be the ceiling. Expansion and aliveness is! Take it from someone who has walked the journey. Although it may be hard to comprehend right now, you have so much more joy, abundance and aliveness waiting for you!

I built this work for the woman who is excellent at holding it all together AND tired of living in survival mode, because I built it for me first.

If you’d like to casually chat more about your journey and how I might help lighten it, please reach out!

~Sharon