meet your mentor

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Thank you for visiting my page and witnessing the love, devotion, and magic I've birthed into my work. If you're reading this you probably struggle with being unaware of your bodily wisdom, innate power, and divine beauty. Maybe you struggle to regulate your emotions, owning your "no", or being aware of certain triggers that pass through your mind. Let me give you an inside peak into my life and how I became HolisticallyAlly.

I've been through so much pain in my life.  My entire adolescence was consumed with depression, suicidal ideation, recreational drug usage, unprotected sex, cutting my wrists, getting bullied by "mean girls", and hating my hormonal, teenage-girl body.

Truth is, I've dealt with quite a bit of death in my life. Like---monstrous death. My father died when I was two, unexpectedly from a brain aneurysm. The boy I had my first kiss with got hit by a car freshman year. I watched my grandfather take his last breath when cancer burdened his life at 14. My uncle shot himself in the head in my living room at 4 am, leaving me to be the only one home to find the aftermath. I was 15. 

You're probably like, "holy fuck Ally"....

Yeah.

I struggled deeply after that. Worse than before the death. More drugs. More sex. More rebellion. More hatred oozing from my psyche. 

I was sent to a series of hospitals; in-patient, out-patient. I was enrolled in summer sessions and therapy. My mother even turned to the hometown medicine woman who helped young women like me. She taught me how to become in tune with my menstrual cycle, connect to the earth, how to do yoga and more holistic avenues. At the time, her work didn't resonate but I will tell you, it sparked a passion in me that has ignited the Phoenix within.

Back to the story.

While I was still lost and suicidal, my parents sent me to an adolescent boarding school in Iowa to "fix" me. They pulled me from school at 16. I literally fell off the face of the Earth. They drove me to the school using a lie to justify their actions. 

I was in the backseat when I overheard my mother say, "I'm so sad to be leaving her there."

I sat up--"you're LEAVING ME there?!?!?"

I was fuming. 

They dropped me off and I began the next year and a half of my life being a student of Midwest Academy. 

Needless to say, it was extremely traumatizing. Harsh rules, rude staff members, and children packed into small bunk rooms with mental health diagnoses a mile long. I saw a girl drink bleach to try to end her life (granted I believe it was mostly for attention, still that was scary). I saw a girl bang her face on the concrete in solitary confinement several times, thus bleeding from her nostrils profusely. I saw a girl rip her hair out where she became bald on one half of her head....and more...

I lived there for 13 months. I gained 35 lbs due to the nutritionally depleted food that was served. 

You can probably image what this did to a young woman my age. I already hated my body. Let's add some weight and stretch marks and strip her of everything she once knew. Very smart logic...

I digress. 

When I came home, I was brainwashed. "I'm going to be the best daughter ever", I'd say. All I wanted was my parent's validation and approval. Meanwhile, the depth of my pain was never healed. The actual root of my issues were looked over, medicated, and suppressed.

So, after being home for a bit, I fell deeper into my pain. I got shipped off to college at a school of my parent's choosing. It was an extremely small, Catholic University in the Everglades of Florida. I started getting into the reject crowd where we were smoke cigarettes, weed, skip class, get poor grades, and do drugs all weekend. My parents got extremely upset with me when I returned home with a 1.9 GPA. They didn't understand why I wasn't "fixed" yet after all of my years being in institutions.  

I wanted to transfer from that school. I didn't fit in. I felt ostracized and lonely. They agreed and I chose to move to Miami, FL. During my transfer, I came home for the summer. This is when the cocaine addiction started. 

I was obsessed with being skinny so cocaine supported that belief system. I wouldn't eat or sleep for days. I was less than 110 lbs, looking sickly and decrepit. I went through a series of mental breakdowns before I finally broke.

I told my mother that day that I couldn't return to Miami for school because Miami was the cocaine capital of the world and I needed support to get clean. She picked up the phone and began to dial the nearest rehab. I begged her to let me fight this by myself. After all, it was me who was going to change me and not another mindless institution making us talk about our feelings in group therapy. 

I needed self-reflection and to interpret my own pain without reliance on others. So, that's what I did. 

Because I was home for a semester, my parents pushed me to study something...anything. I do agree that they supported me the best they could during my tribulations. So, they urged me to study yoga. 

I had relapsed on cocaine during this time. I literally went to my yoga audition for graduation high as fuck on narcotics. I forgot the cues and embarrassed myself in front of everyone. 

The deep frustration and alienation from that experience made me quit. 

I never wanted to feel that again.

So I did.

I went to school in the Spring. I found my footing in a new city. I buckled down on my school work. I sat in the first row. Made friends with all my teachers. 3 years later, I graduated with a 3.5 GPA and Cum Laude.

I felt my parents were finally proud of me

I WAS FINALLY PROUD OF ME.

At this point, I was 4 years clean from drugs when I met my amazing partner, Aaron. 

He's healed me in so many ways. We are due to get married in 2023. 

Since my most painful moments, I've utilized practices to support my healing journey---

---yoga, somatic breath work, transcendental exercises, subconscious reprogramming, being accountable for my pain, having compassion for my journey, taking radical responsibility for my triggers and more. 

Do I still deal with depression?

YES.

 It's just more manageable. 

I've gone to get certified in numerous things as well. Between receiving my yoga certificate, volunteering hundreds of hours to coaching in a transformational training room, to getting a business degree, to becoming a certified health coach at the Integrative School of Nutrition, still nothing, I mean NOTHING, has provided me with the skill set to serve my clients the way my own personal experiences have. 

I truly believe my life experience is enough.

I am enough.

I became Holistically Ally and built my brand to help women see this in themselves too, to be radically honest with their pain, and committing to no more spiritual bypassing their way through life. 

I am Ally. Hear me roar.