Where our story begins—
“It is in the nature of things to be drawn to the very experiences that will spoil our innocence, transform our lives, and give us necessary complexity and depth.”
I recently returned to my grandparents’ home and found bundles of handwritten letters from when I was 13.
At the time, my bestie and I were trying to figure out boys and falling in love.
But inside were also long conversations about what it was like for to be an Atlantic Ocean apart now, and why my little sister had stopped eating.
She was force hospitalized for anorexia near death at 11 years old.
Inside the letters and diary entries are all the signs that write a story like mine, and of so many others.
Now I can look back with the eye that was so needed at the time.
A miracle.
I grew up in a family of pioneers.
My great-grandmother was one of the first women to attend MIT.
My French mother followed her heart as an artist and married an American, despite her fathers threat to disown her. My great-grandfather founded an industrial parts company that would take my family line out of the coal mines, where he once spent over 24 hours trapped underground himself. My grandfather was nationally decorated for the expansion of this company.
But it was time for a new contribution. One of emotional and spiritual intelligence, connection to sexual life force and sovereignty, awakened relational intimacy, evolving consciousness, and psychosomatic fluency. Un-seen, met, championed or protected in my innate embodiment of these qualities at home, and constantly torn away from the supports I developed outside of it due to international moves, I internalized a deep sense of being unsafe, alone, unwanted and incapable. I learned to achieve for love - vomiting, starving and exercising to extremes and exhaustion to cope.
Until I’d had enough.
Scouring my body for fat in the mirror one morning, I glimpsed the possibility opening to me as a young adult. This was no life. Finding satisfaction in my skeletal frame was all I had left for comfort from the existential pressure.
I sensed that if I continued as I did, my sense of purpose and belonging, the birthrights of pleasure, health, play, and safety, a viable financial future, powerful community, an aligned vocation and vibrant love life… these would fail to make the agenda.
If I was to live my eating disorder would have to go. Or I would bleed out over a toilet alone, never to love myself, be loved, and share my gifts.
I had countless failed attempts, relapsing repetitively, even after dropping out of college, months on a treatment ward, countless therapy hours, and returning to live at my parents’. I was at a loss.
Grace came into play at my lowest. I miraculously met a woman who’d been where I was 23 years ago - a childhood friend of my father’s. Within hours of meeting we were laughing barefoot on the couch, sweating profusely in the NY summer heat, sharing all the fucked up idiosyncratic shit we’d done with food - our favorite OCD habits and indulgences, our thoughts, everything. Anything. For the first time in a long time, I felt understood, connected, accepted and expressed.
With her support and guidance, as well as the community she introduced me to, I got my first stable meal, day, week.
I became intimate with my needs, desires, and intuition step by step. I freed up long-buried trauma I finally had the capacity and resources to process. And I started building a life that took shape according to self-trust and self-worth.
The essence of me that had been subverted into my eating disorder came out to play and create.
I went from collapse, to testing out my legs, to jumping in to support others. In doing so I developed trust in myself, Spirit, and life.
It started from my parents’ basement, to having my first apartment. It journeyed me from the hard-wood floors of Paris dance studios, across the world to Los Angeles for my acting career, and into the world of fitness and health coaching. I discovered tantra, pole dancing, and got to assist and collaborate with both mentors and other entrepreneurs, at festivals, retreats, courses, and gatherings.
I came into communities as wild, diverse, service-oriented and human-centric as myself. I went on African safari, skydiving, to the luxury of Grecian infinity pools… and so much more.
13 years out from bottom, I have the longevity to understand repetitive change and rebirth.
I have the privilege of being an integral part of an incredible global community of heart-centered artists and activists. I have been present beside my 93 year old French grandmother, taking in stories of world war and repairing across generations. I have necessary and change-making conversations with my family, and laugh a lot with them.
I have settled into the path that is mine alone, and I play my role.
I get to contribute who I am, nurture my continually unfolding spiritual awakening, and hold my humanity alongside my divinity.
It is a testament to the possible.
The words are often ascribed to Goethe:
“Whatever you can do or dream you can do, begin it; Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.”.
Your magic is my commitment.
“The end is where we start from.”
—TS Eliot
“Where to begin?
I was initially drawn to Issa because of her radiant energy and her deep passion for her work and all of our sessions were filled with exactly those things. Issa gently supported me in unpacking my struggles with emotional and physical health and helped guide me to begin to take more ownership of my life journey. Our talk sessions were deep and rich with tools and resources for me to play with and our sessions were potent and FUN. My sessions with Issa were pivotal. She helped me re-pattern my approach to feel more nourishing and enjoyable after years of it being a grind. Issa's playful, radiant spirit is infused in all of her work. I'm really grateful for our journey together and would highly recommend her!”