Welcome to my blossoming life

My name is Elizabeth, and my vision is that every person has the opportunity to bloom into a better, brighter, and more beautiful life every day. My mission in life is to continue blossoming into my realest, best life while helping others blossom into their realest, best life, too!

I use they/she pronouns, and I live in Illinois. I’m raising my two kids with their dad (who is also my business partner, ally, and soulfriend). I’m genderqueer and lesbian. I’ve been diagnosed with ADHD, anxiety, and OCD, and I've been designing my life to accommodate these challenges and opportunities. I love art, and I draw with color pencil and chalk pastel.I love cooking – my kitchen inspirations come from Pennsylvania Dutch, Eastern European, and Mediterranean cuisines. I also write, dream, and create all kinds of things!

I was adopted through a closed, domestic adoption when I was 4 months old. My adoption and reunion with biological family have had profound impacts on my life.

I graduated with distinction from the University of Illinois in 2010 with a degree in Molecular and Cellular Biology. I immediately started my first business, a tutoring company that has served thousands of middle school, high school, and college students and their families.

I developed a passion for serving communities marginalized by harmful practices and policies, so I ran a successful campaign for my local school board.

After I was elected to school board, I unwittingly began a four-year journey filled with challenge, failure, struggle, success, growth, and self-realization. I saw a future for myself within public education, and I poured my life into being the best school board member and parliamentarian I could. I co-authored the very first antiracism resolution for a school district in the state of Illinois, and many school districts followed our lead. I wrote and advocated for many resolutions aimed at improving public education, especially increasing funding. I was elected by other school board members to lead this work and to advocate for policy reform at state delegate assemblies.

All of this was happening while a global pandemic burned down life as I’d known it.

I gained friends and lost friends. I loved from the depths of my soul and had my heart broken. I entered into reunion with my biological mother and learned how to build relationships out of the trauma that is adoption. My lifelong struggles with addiction came to a head when I finally chose alcohol sobriety in July 2022.

I felt really lonely and incredibly overwhelmed almost every day as a school board member. I struggled with addiction and suicidal ideations. I was new to politics and I was bombarded with painful lessons from my novice mistakes every day. This led me to become hateful and distrustful of everyone for a while. I leaned on toxic friendships, thinking that toxic friendships were better than none at all.

I began to question everything and everyone in my life. Who am I? What is my gender? Who am I attracted to? Where am I going? What do I want out of life?

In my most broken moments, I cried out for help. Harry Styles’ hit song, “As It Was,” perfectly captured how I was experiencing life at the age of 33: Ringin’ the bell, and nobody’s comin’ to help.

And finally, someone did come to help. That person was me.

Nobody knew my dark hole as well as I did. Nobody knew my rock bottom that way I did, so nobody else knew how to build a ladder to get out. I was painfully lonely because nobody understood what I needed from my friendships and relationships, and I learned that I would have to say what I needed from the people who loved me. I never considered that I’d lost my voice – I had been in the public eye for years and I felt very comfortable being a loud, passionate advocate for others.

I realized I had rarely used my own voice to advocate for myself, for what I needed to be happy. I realized I had burned myself down to keep others warm and trapped myself in this dark hole. Every day that I abandoned myself, every time I chose what someone else wanted instead of what I wanted, every moment I gave up my chance to choose myself, kept me at my lonely rock bottom. And I decided to come out.

I had to acknowledge really hard truths about myself. I started healing and growing. I developed really strong boundaries and expectations. I became very selective about who and what was allowed in my life.

Now I am combining all of my lived experiences, along with my skills and expertise as an entrepreneur, educator, and coach, to work with folks of all walks of life who are ready to blossom into their next best season.