Hello! My name is Angie
I’m a wife to a funny and kind man, a mother to two teenage daughters, an auntie to a diverse group of individuals, and a loving friend to countless magical humans. I’m also a lover of the mountains and swimming in natural bodies of water, an intuitive artist, an embodied dancer, a sensual goddess, a creative entrepreneur, a seeker of truth and magic, an explorer of new ways, a disruptor of norms and oppressive conditionings, and a visionary for a kinder world.
I was born and raised in a small town in eastern Washington where it often felt like everyone knew everyone. It was a no-stoplight town, scattered with humble mom and pop shops, a single main street that ran from one end of town to the other which you could walk in 5-minutes flat.
I was born into a HUGE mixed-race family. My dad is white, born and raised in Colorado, with 13 brothers and sisters. My mom is Mexican, born and raised in Mexico, with 9 brothers and sisters of her own. I’ve lost track of how many cousins I have, although at last count it was somewhere between 60 and 70. And that’s only first cousins.
Our weekends, holidays, and birthdays were typically spent gathered in large groups of 30 people or more. The cultural differences between the two sides of my family were interesting. My dad’s family was polite, sometimes timid, conservative, evangelical, religious, and centered around holiday gathering, food, and my grandparents. My mom’s family was dynamic, loud, outspoken, superstitious, dramatic, and centered around food, dancing, and celebrations. Both were rooted in community.
MY HOMETOWN, FAMILY, AND THE GROUPS I WAS A PART OF ALL SHAPED MY VALUES AROUND CONNECTION, COLLABORATION, INCLUSIVITY, AND COMMUNITY!
Like every human, my family, friends, teachers, authority figures, and culture shaped my values, beliefs, behaviors, biases, and worldview. I was modeled and taught what I should and shouldn’t do, what was right and wrong, what was good and bad, and what I needed to do to succeed in life.
In addition, my mom’s side of the family, and the Mexican culture in general, centered their time and energy around pleasure and play, when they were off work. I grew up privileged to eat delicious food made by my mom, bursting with flavor, color, and texture. Gathering was important and so often times we’d host parties at the house. There were often the sounds of upbeat joyful music, the intoxicating smells of potluck meals, lots of people letting loose and talking loudly, and sometimes, even dancing. Women dressed to the nines in colorful outfits, fancy shoes, plenty of makeup, and well-groomed hair.
This part of my family shaped my relationship to my 6 senses and showed me what it was like to have my body feel awake, alive, and in joy.
I was privileged enough to attend college as one of the first from both my dad's and mom’s sides of the family. I chose a University in Idaho and decided to study Social Work, a profession devoted to helping people function the best they can within their environment. I was SO excited about pursuing this profession and having a positive impact on the world around me!
While in school, I also fell in love with Sociology (the study of human social life, social change, and social causes and consequences of human behavior) and Psychology (the study of mind and behavior, unconscious and conscious phenomena, including feelings). I just couldn’t get enough!
THIS GAVE ME PERMISSION FOR THE FIRST TIME TO TRULY QUESTION THE BELIEFS, NARRATIVES, CONDITIONING, AND SYSTEMS THAT I GREW UP WITH, THAT I WAS TOLD NEVER TO CHALLENGE! AND I QUESTIONED EVERYTHING!!!
While this may sound like no big deal to some, this questioning of the beliefs, narratives, conditionings, systems, and my own identity came with intense grief. I was losing the identity of who I had been for so many years, the friends I’d hung out with, communities I was a part of, and a picture of the future that I’d thought I was going to have.
But what I was slowly gaining, was something so much more true, authentic, and aligned for me.
After several months of allowing myself to experience the grief of this major transition, I gave myself permission to learn, explore, and experiment with my life. For me, this looked like getting curious about my own core beliefs, challenging those beliefs, experimenting with new actions, making mistakes, reading books, listening to stories, following my intuition, letting go of the “right way” of doing things, participating in new communities, exploring different forms of spirituality, making new friends, studying abroad in Mexico, dating different people, learning from other people’s world views, and always, always following love.
THIS ENTIRE EXPERIENCE HELPED ME RETURN TO WHO I WAS BEFORE THE WORLD TOLD ME WHO I WAS SUPPOSED TO BE.
Ever since college, I have spent the last 20 years reading books about human behavior, taking group classes to help my healing, meeting with a therapist to work through hard things, doing art as a tool for processing and expressing my feelings, and trying out a variety of healing modalities.
The one thing I’m learning over and over again is you can’t do this healing work on yourself by yourself. Our culture is very good at telling us we have to do everything by ourselves, but it is in community and in connection with others that we heal and continue to stay healthy.
Since I started studying, my purpose has never wavered. To be along side people while helping them to be their best selves and function in the best way they can within their environment. I believe, when we heal our internal world, we heal our outer world.
I went on to take a year-long program earning my certification as a Transformational Life Coach with Andrea Leda. I loved every second of that program and I now have the great pleasure of blending my 20 + years of education, personal experience, certifications, intuitive art practices, and a wide variety of transformational tools to serve and support others along their own personal journey. It’s a dream!
For the last few years, I have had the honor of coaching individuals 1 on 1 via phone, zoom, or in person. In addition, I’ve had the joy of facilitating various women’s gatherings, including a women’s retreat, art classes, a self-compassion series, a life in color series, and more community workshops.
I’m known for being curious, asking lots of questions, listening without judgment, digging deep, offering compassion, and having conversations with people that often leave them with a sense of self-acceptance, new perspective, hope, lightness, and more possibility. It is my absolute joy to work with individuals who are ready to do some healing work both 1 on 1 and in community.
As a human, I struggle with the same things you do. I’m often working with my own personal life coach, therapist, and other professionals. I continue to further my education and learning of these topics. In addition, I am invested in my unlearning so that I can be my most aligned self as well as a powerful coach and mentor to my clients.
Some of the ways I connect and take care of myself today are by cooking colorful and delicious foods in the kitchen, juicing, taking early morning walks, moving my body through yoga, hiking the trails of the PNW, sitting in coffee shops with friends, dancing to Salsa music in Seattle, having a movie night with the family, reading books about psychology and social justice, reading fiction books for pleasure within my bookclub community, drawing mandalas or zentangle animals, getting messy with paint on canvas, taking weekend trips with my girlfriends, carving out time to laugh out loud with my hilarious husband, or exploring new places in our beautiful state of Washington.
