Juliet Patrice Dillon

I attribute my transformation to doing the deep inner work and having the courage to advocate for myself. For my whole life, I was the chameleon, the follower, the adapter, the easy-going one that just did what everyone else wanted. I never advocated for myself. But when I hired my life coach Barb Wade in 2022, I started unraveling the patterns in my life where I had let people take advantage of me and been surrounded by narcissistic, toxic abuse without even knowing it. During a meditation session, I came out of it realizing I have this subconscious belief that I'm unlovable, and my whole life had been built around not deserving, not being worthy, not being enough. That was the turning point where I realized you can't fix it till you know what's going on, what's the issue. I really dove into the deep inner work, spiritual work, meditation, journaling, and listening to great speakers. I did a ton of reading. Through that work, I blossomed and became strong enough to advocate for myself, to get divorced and get out of the abusive marriage. Then I had to advocate for myself in my career too. When my company forced me to resign after I said I couldn't work with a toxic person anymore, that became the push to share my message with the world. If I can endure 30, 40 years of abuse and come out the other side to realize who I am and live my purpose, then so can so many others. My trip to Hawaii in 2024 was the first time I did something for myself, and I came out of that knowing my purpose is love. Not flowery love, but that deep love of self. I realized I've been loving people and coaching people amidst all this adversity my whole life, and now it's time to really rise and be a vessel of impact.

Two women have been instrumental in my growth and have really shaped my journey. The first is Barb Wade, who is a speaker, coach, and just a beautiful, wonderful mentor for me. She's really the one who started my journey. She was a speaker in the Grow Women's group at my former organization, and she did this great talk about your inner child, your little girl, and that's where that became a concept for me. She planted that seed, and then I had a couple sessions with her and just loved everything she had to say. I ended up becoming her client and working with her, which really was the beginning of taking action to change my life. I had thought a million different times how I might change my life, but she helped me to actually be the catalyst to start changing my life. The second is Kira Brinton, who is the CEO of JOA Publishing. Days after I lost my job, I discovered her on an ad on social media about writing your book, and I thought maybe I'm forced out of my job because I'm supposed to write my book about all of this. Days later, I was on a plane flying to Idaho, using the last of the money I had in my bank account to go meet with her for a one-day writer's immersion. She has just been such an incredible inspiration for me, the things she teaches, the way that she gets in touch with the divine and brings that into figuring out your message. She's actually a book medium, as she calls it, and she's launching a really cool kind of TV show. She's just an incredible inspiration. I just love everything about her. Eventually, I plan to publish my book with her. She's an incredible thought leader. Flying home from Idaho the next day, I had this amazing breakthrough. I was gonna continue writing my book on the plane, but I couldn't get my Google Drive to work, so I just started using my Notes app and thinking about titles. When I got to this one particular title while brainstorming, I literally felt my heart jump out of my chest. I then came home and had my adult son, who's 25 and a tattoo artist, work together with me to create a custom tattoo that says 'Free to choose me.' That's the words that I try to live now, the words that I want to empower other women with, that you are free to choose you, free to choose me in every moment, and it's not selfish.

Love is at the core of everything, but it's so much harder than just looking in the mirror and saying I love you. And granted, looking in the mirror and telling yourself I love you is not easy, but that's a starting point. I do what's called the love check, and I have this posted on my website. You actually go through and picture yourself as a little boy or a little girl, and whatever image you get, you as your adult self speak into that little version of you and say, you're needed, you're wanted, I love you, you are perfect just the way you are, your body is just the way it's supposed to be, you have an amazing purpose to live in this life, you're special, and a whole bunch of other things. You kind of go through that process and see what comes up. What do you feel in your body? Did you get emotional? Just start to write down how it makes you feel. And that's the beginning of opening up some of the work that you need to do in yourself to love yourself.

People get so stressed out, so burnt out in daily life, whether it's personal relationships, or career, or a million other types of stress. Fifty percent of people in the U.S. are lonely. A lot of us are dealing with depression. I think over 75% of us are stressed out a lot. That's why I came up with this concept for what I'm calling Renovation Love Sanctuary, which is a nature immersive luxury wellness and agritourism resort. We're in the process of raising funds to build that, but it's ultimately a space for women, or men, for everyone to do the work that I've taken years to do, and come here and let's plant that seed for you to be in your own Renovation Love Journey, where you work on renovating what love means within. My vision right now is really looking at opportunities to speak at events where I can get my message out, and through that, then you can cater to people wanting to do some coaching, or group coaching, or workshops, which can be done in person or on Zoom. That kind of connection can happen anywhere. I'm building that base and my message, and really making it clear to people what I'm about by being authentic and telling my story, and getting that out to empower people to know that you also can be your own advocate for your life. I'm raising money and working on investors to actually start the big RLS, as I call it, that big sanctuary, to have that resort space for people to do this kind of work and really love yourself. That whole idea started with horses, by the way. Horses, for me, are the ultimate symbol of freedom and love. I think it's a little bit more of the freedom to know that you get to choose your life, that you have agency, and you can advocate for yourself, and the love of yourself, because everything good comes from loving yourself exactly as you are. So I'm doing speaking, doing events, doing workshops, doing some one-on-one work, but also raising the funds to be able to start the bigger vision to create that place.

Leading with love is number one, and I actually came up with my own little leadership framework that I plan to train on. It's leading with love, integrity, transparency, and authenticity. Those are my core values, and I want to bring that to everything I do.