I have never told this story in full.
I have mentioned the shed. I have mentioned the bankruptcy and the divorce and the eighteen years of single motherhood. I have said the words out loud enough times now that they no longer break me when I say them.
But I have not told you what the shed actually looked like.
So here it is.
No floor. Concrete slab, uneven, cold in winter and baking in summer. No doors — I hung a curtain across the opening and called it privacy. No electricity. We used candles and a gas burner and the light that came in through the gap above the curtain in the mornings.
I bathed my children in a tin bath. I heated water on the gas burner. I told them it was an adventure.
I believed it, some nights. On the other nights I sat outside on the slab after they were asleep and looked at the stars and asked very sincerely whether this was all there was.
It was not. But I did not know that yet.
I have mentioned the shed. I have mentioned the bankruptcy and the divorce and the eighteen years of single motherhood. I have said the words out loud enough times now that they no longer break me when I say them.
But I have not told you what the shed actually looked like.
So here it is.
No floor. Concrete slab, uneven, cold in winter and baking in summer. No doors — I hung a curtain across the opening and called it privacy. No electricity. We used candles and a gas burner and the light that came in through the gap above the curtain in the mornings.
I bathed my children in a tin bath. I heated water on the gas burner. I told them it was an adventure.
I believed it, some nights. On the other nights I sat outside on the slab after they were asleep and looked at the stars and asked very sincerely whether this was all there was.
It was not. But I did not know that yet.
Before the shed
I want to be clear about something: the shed was not the beginning of the hard things. It was the middle.
Before the shed there was a marriage that stopped being a marriage long before it ended. There was financial collapse — real collapse, the kind where you learn exactly who your friends are and the answer is a much shorter list than you expected. There was illness. Lyme disease, diagnosed and declared permanent. I was told to manage it, not cure it. I was told this was simply my life now.
I call it conquered. Not managed. Conquered.
I tell you this not for sympathy — I genuinely do not want it — but because I think it matters that you know the person asking you to trust her with your transformation has not come from comfortable circumstances. She has not read about hard things. She has lived inside them.
‘I did not become who I am despite what happened to me. I became who I am because of what I chose to do inside it.’
Before the shed there was a marriage that stopped being a marriage long before it ended. There was financial collapse — real collapse, the kind where you learn exactly who your friends are and the answer is a much shorter list than you expected. There was illness. Lyme disease, diagnosed and declared permanent. I was told to manage it, not cure it. I was told this was simply my life now.
I call it conquered. Not managed. Conquered.
I tell you this not for sympathy — I genuinely do not want it — but because I think it matters that you know the person asking you to trust her with your transformation has not come from comfortable circumstances. She has not read about hard things. She has lived inside them.
‘I did not become who I am despite what happened to me. I became who I am because of what I chose to do inside it.’
The moment everything shifted
There was no single moment. I want to tell you there was — a sunrise, a realization, a voice from somewhere — but that is not how it happened.
It happened in small decisions that seemed insignificant at the time.
The decision to get up when I did not want to. To eat something real when processed was easier. To walk — just walk — when movement felt like one more thing I did not have the energy for. To speak to myself the way I would speak to my children. Not cruelly. Not dismissively.
The decision, repeated ten thousand times, to act like someone who was going to be okay.
Eventually the acting became being.
That is the foundation of The Pearl Method. Not a technique. Not a system. A way of becoming — through the ordinary days, through the hard seasons, through the moments where you choose yourself when nobody else is watching.
It happened in small decisions that seemed insignificant at the time.
The decision to get up when I did not want to. To eat something real when processed was easier. To walk — just walk — when movement felt like one more thing I did not have the energy for. To speak to myself the way I would speak to my children. Not cruelly. Not dismissively.
The decision, repeated ten thousand times, to act like someone who was going to be okay.
Eventually the acting became being.
That is the foundation of The Pearl Method. Not a technique. Not a system. A way of becoming — through the ordinary days, through the hard seasons, through the moments where you choose yourself when nobody else is watching.
Who I am building this for
I am turning 50 in January.
I am the strongest I have ever been. The healthiest. The most clear. The most at home in my body and my life.
I did not get here through willpower. I got here through the three pillars I now offer to every woman I work with — clean eating that is real and sustainable, movement that meets your body where it is, and the deep mindset work that changes not just what you do but who you believe yourself to be.
The Pearl Method exists for the woman who has tried. Who has started and stopped and started again and is beginning to wonder whether it is possible for someone like her.
It is. I know because I am someone like her.
I am the strongest I have ever been. The healthiest. The most clear. The most at home in my body and my life.
I did not get here through willpower. I got here through the three pillars I now offer to every woman I work with — clean eating that is real and sustainable, movement that meets your body where it is, and the deep mindset work that changes not just what you do but who you believe yourself to be.
The Pearl Method exists for the woman who has tried. Who has started and stopped and started again and is beginning to wonder whether it is possible for someone like her.
It is. I know because I am someone like her.
What I want you to know
The shed did not break me.
The bankruptcy did not break me. The divorce did not. The illness did not. The years of making school lunches by candlelight did not.
None of it broke me because I refused — not always gracefully, not always immediately, but eventually and completely — to be broken by it.
You are not broken either.
You are in the middle of being pressed into something. The question is what you will let it make you.
If you want to read more about the work we do together, start with The Method. If something in you already knows it is time, let’s begin. And if you found this while looking for something to eat, I also wrote a recipe for the days when you need to come home to yourself — it is a good place to start.
I read every message personally. I always will.
The bankruptcy did not break me. The divorce did not. The illness did not. The years of making school lunches by candlelight did not.
None of it broke me because I refused — not always gracefully, not always immediately, but eventually and completely — to be broken by it.
You are not broken either.
You are in the middle of being pressed into something. The question is what you will let it make you.
If you want to read more about the work we do together, start with The Method. If something in you already knows it is time, let’s begin. And if you found this while looking for something to eat, I also wrote a recipe for the days when you need to come home to yourself — it is a good place to start.
I read every message personally. I always will.
