How my alcoholic mother helped me launch a global wellness business.

When I was 9 years old I had to scream at my drunk mom to steer the car away from a highway dividing median so we didn’t crash.

Living life with an alcoholic wasn’t easy. There was a lot of uncertainty, tears, fear, stress and a lot of moving from place to place.

This upbringing did something to me.

Firs,t it really messed me up where I was off the rails big time as a teenager. Doing drugs, drinking and sleeping with boys.

Then at 16, when I was kicked out, I was finally “set right”…except there is no way I should have been.

I lived in a horrible situation with my boyfriend, his mom and their 10 cats and 1 dog. The place was disgusting with cat piss and shit everywhere – literally EVERYWHERE, on the stove, dug into the carpet, in the furnace ducts. The house reeked. And it was filthy beyond the animal mess. Newspapers, cigarette butts. The place reeked not only of garbage but of abandoned hope and despair.

And the mindset in that house was beyond reprehensible. Victim and blame mentality abound, drug and alcohol addictions, and passive aggressive jabs at every turn.

If my self-worth and self-esteem wasn’t already damaged before moving in there, you can rest assured it was rock bottom when I was there. So was my weight. I dropped down to 80lbs – I was a skeleton and was starving all the time.

But somehow, somewhere, I had found an inner strength. I have no idea where it came from. When I moved into that house I stopped drinking and doing drugs and instead focused on school and volunteering at a local hospital.

While anger, neglect, abuse and despair raged in that house, outside I was doing everything I could to be a better person. I was continuously “up levelling” without even knowing what the hell that meant.

This set the tone for what was to become my true calling.

I was always very intuitive, always an amazing manifestor, a smart business woman and a brilliant life coach – I just didn’t know I was doing any of that yet.

For years I was considered the go-to person for wisdom and advice, people would ask me if I had a “feeling” about something (their boyfriends, whether their parents were coming home so we could throw a party etc), and I was that person that people confessed EVERYTHING to. Once a man I had literally just met started telling me about his vasectomy.

What followed was years working in the corporate world, always feeling really unhappy and never really progressing up the ranks. Something held me back and I was always a bit of a rebel and not much of a team player. I felt my way was much better, and hated, hated, hated being managed, especially micromanaged. And anytime I had a boss who micromanaged me it always ended up in a massive argument and a parting of ways…who knew that this is a base requirement of being an entrepreneur?

Certainly not me, I never considered myself to have a business. I’m not one of those entrepreneurs who had businesses since I was 3 years old selling lemonade or whatever. I came into my calling very late in life.

After my first child was born was when I realized there was something more for me. I had been exploring other options including psychology, homeopathy, massage therapy. But when I was exposed to holistic nutrition, I knew I had landed on something special. And when I started nutrition coaching I knew I had found my calling.

And that’s when my empire began. I had (and still have) big dreams to overturn the dieting industry. To help women (and men) wake up and live a full life, and to calm the storms within – both physically, mentally and in their soul.

What prepped me for this journey to guide others was being “assigned” to a mom who had these addictive behaviours, victim mentality, and all around neediness. While the women I work with aren’t alcoholics, they are addicted to certain behaviours such as binge eating, perfectionism, and self sabotage. Because of my earlier schooling, I am more than prepped and able to help guide these women through their own fire to the calm on the other side, and for that, I am extremely grateful.

My mother passed away in 2015 from pancreatic cancer, and after her death, my sister and I found 8 bottles of vermouth in her apartment. Addicted even in sickness and death – a part of me feels I failed her, that I couldn’t save her, and that’s something I grapple with daily. But it wasn’t my job to save her, it was her job to train me to be the woman I am today, so despite all of the tumultuous events of my life, I am also grateful to her for the experience because it means I can serve others at a much higher level.

So this mother’s day I honour my mom, and I honour all of us mom’s (and dad’s) who are doing the very best we can to raise our kids better than our parents raised us, in the hopes we don’t screw them up too badly (I often joke that I’m not saving for my kids’ education but for their therapy and coaching bills…).

It’s my honour to serve you in any way you see fit. Thank you for reading this story and I hope that if you had a similar experience you are able to make peace with it yourself and begin to let go of any of the addictions you may find yourself grappling with in your own life.

And if not, there is always chocolate.

With love

Krisha