I was born outside of Paris, in the 60’s and grew up surrounded by strong minded, life-loving, colorful people. I moved to the United States (not fully voluntarily) at the age of 17 - one day after graduating from high school.
Life grabbed a hold of me pretty fast and I found myself embarking on an unlikely career as a makeup artist for the movies and fashion industry, which for a while included freelancing for Playboy magazine. I was very young, it was a lot of fun, it was a little crazy and after ten years of working and moving around (Miami, Chicago, back to Paris, Seattle, Honolulu), I remember thinking that the most exciting thing that could happen to me that day, was that a movie star’s nose would need re-powdering. As glamourous as it sounds, it just was no longer enough.
I was living in Hawaii at the time, had just met a young sailor and within a few weeks, got married. Soon after that, I closed my tackle box/makeup case for the last time, taking with me many memories as well as a non negotiable commitment to always truly enjoy the way I would create my income.
My new husband and I moved to a small island in Washington and for the next 12 years made three beautiful babies and created a variety of businesses reflecting the unavoidable reality that I had become an incorrigible entrepreneur.
The fact that neither one of us knew how to bake slowed us down very little in opening what would eventually become two award-winning French bakeries. You know why? Because we knew how the delicious pastries were supposed to taste. We knew just how crusty the wonderfully smelling bread was supposed to be. Discovering HOW to get there was the fun part. It often is - if we dare.
The years spent creating, raising and eventually parting with La Vie en Rose bakeries have been one of the biggest gifts of my life.
Following the sale of the bakeries - and a divorce - I entered a time of financial and emotional chaos during which I got to experience the adventure of raising three kids as a single mom - still plagued (or was it blessed?) with the strong knowing that I could not “sell my time” for work that would leave me feeling less than alive.
In that case, this translated to not leaving my kids to “go to work.”
This impediment lead me to exotic pursuits such as creating The Laundry Fairy (well, I did have a washing machine), running a community toddler group (I had one of those, too), selling apricot syrup at farmers market, providing amazing frozen croissants to French schools ... and more.
Through all this, the same story kept whispering in my ear.
The biggest story of all, the one I now love to share:
Life does NOT have to be hard.
It CAN be deliciously sweet.
Eventually, the world felt upside-up again and I discovered “what I want to do when I grow up.”
Since then, I have written two books, become a founding member of the International Association of Coaches, a graduate of the Landmark Education Forum and an an insatiable student of Byron Katie’s work.
Today, I work with a wide variety of people ranging from single moms and CEOs to the US Navy. I connect with them one-on-one as well as in rooms of hundreds. I find that in the end, we are all pretty similar. I find that we are all rather tender and that we all want more of the same things - and less of others: we all want more fun, more acceptance, more peace, more love, more of what makes us feel alive; we all want less pain, less stress, less fear, less of what deadens us. Really, we all want to remember that life can be deliciously sweet.
Don’t you?
I look forward to meeting you and to sharing my special recipes with you. Some are simply practical (and occasionally a little weird) while others are gently spiritual. All of them lead simply to more peace of mind, more happiness.
And to more deliciousness.
“Life does not have to be hard. It can be deliciously sweet.”
