Her Story
About Michelle
My professional journey has been deeply shaped by my personal experiences. I started working with at-risk teenagers at an organization called Treehouse in 2009, doing mentoring and coaching. During that time, I was a stay-at-home mom and my marriage was falling apart. My husband was struggling with addiction, and in my self-righteousness, I thought he was the one with all the problems. But when I went to counseling, the counselor completely stumped me by telling me that I didn't have marital problems, I had personal problems. That wake-up call changed everything. His approach was revolutionary to me because instead of focusing on external behaviors, he helped me look internally at my belief systems and the roots of my issues. He showed me that if we focus on the internal things, the roots of the stuff, then the external issues are going to naturally start to change. I had never approached a problem like that before, and he was 100% right. I continued working with him from 2009 until he passed away two years ago. As I put into practice what he was teaching me, he noticed my life drastically changing and invited me to come on board and start to counsel with him. He basically trained me up in becoming a counselor. I had one foot in doing the counseling stuff and the other foot still working with at-risk teenagers. I started to notice that a number of my teens needed some deeper work, they needed counseling, not just mentorship. So I started to invite them and their families into the counseling process that I had gone through. Even with teenagers, I started to see some miraculous changes as they grabbed hold of this methodology of focusing inward and looking at their belief systems. Eventually I had to choose between continuing to work at Treehouse with the teens or doing the counseling stuff full-time. I transitioned to counseling full-time in 2020 because I wanted to work with people on a deeper level that can actually bring transformation into their lives. Shortly thereafter, I was invited to take an executive director role within the organization, and I've continued to do both the executive director role as well as the counseling and some of the inner healing classes that we do. We're a faith-based organization, and we're very much about what does God say about you, how does God see you, and how do you take that and internalize that and live from that space. For me, what is and always has been the most exciting thing is to watch transformations when people's eyes start to awaken to the truth of who they are, what they were made for, their purpose and intentionality in life. I am a wounded healer, and God has qualified me not because I'm the smartest person, but because I'm willing to say yes and I'm willing to sit with people and help guide them to a place of freedom and inner healing.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Michelle
01What do you attribute your success to?
Honestly, it's my faith, it's God. If you knew me 20 years ago, I was a hot mess. And what's so sad about it is my self-righteousness in my hot mess, too. You couldn't tell me nothing. I knew it all. And then I got broken, you know, and that happened with my marriage. And the only thing that helped me to get back up was my faith. God showed me who I was, and through my own counseling process, I started believing that I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength, which means that I'm willing to say yes to things that are way over my head, not because I have confidence in myself, but because I have confidence in Him. My job is to just say yes and stay open and stay hanging on to Him. He's gonna open the doors and close the doors and establish my steps and bring the right people and send out the wrong people. I am not qualified for the job that I'm doing. If you look at my qualifications, I didn't go to school for psychology or medicine, none of that stuff. I am a wounded healer. God has qualified me not because I'm the smartest person, but because I'm willing to say yes, and I'm willing to sit with people, and I'm willing to process through with them, and I'm willing to just do what I can to help them get set free. When I am just saying yes to being present, then God gets to do His work, which is the only person who can change people anyways. I learned that a long time ago, I can't change nobody. My job is not to change people, my job is to sit, listen, to guide, and let God do His job and bring people into that healing and restoration. When we have that hierarchy figured out, where it's not about me and what I can do and my skills and my gifts, I have empty hands when it comes to it. What I can do is to say yes and be present and let God do His job. As I continue to keep that hierarchy in order, that's when I start to see the greatest transformation in people.
02What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
I think opportunity-wise, our society right now has never been more anxious, more fearful, more stressed out, more burnt out. Especially with COVID happening, the potential for World War III, there's so many things going on where people's mental health is really breaking down. As a result, there is an opportunity for people to step in. When there's hard things going on around us, we have a choice to either embrace what life is bringing us or to resist it. People normally lean towards resisting it because we don't want to go through it, it's hard, it's painful, it's not a quick and easy fix. But if people will embrace what's coming up as a result of our world circumstances, government circumstances, job circumstances, health, whatever, if we're willing to embrace it, really some of the things that are happening in our lives are issues that have always been there, it's just taken a perfect storm for those things to come up. When we're feeling that anxiety, when we're feeling that stress or we're feeling broken, that's an indication that hey, this is an opportunity for you to get healed. See this as a gift, because it can heal some stuff that's always been there that you've never addressed because you haven't been in enough pain. If we're not in enough pain, we'll try to keep going. We sometimes have to get to a place of total brokenness where we're finally open and willing to change. Our society right now and where our culture is right now is really breaking people down, and it's an opportunity for us, if we're individuals who need counseling or want to work on ourselves or want to grow and mature, it's a chance to lean into this and get in a safe space where we can start to work on ourselves. I think the challenge is healthcare and the cost of getting help. That's a huge deterrent for people. Who wouldn't like to go see a counselor and have somebody you can go vent with and work on your crap? But who's got the money, even with healthcare? I gotta spend $4,000 before my healthcare even kicks in. The challenge within our healthcare system and our high deductibles keep people who are even making decent money from being able to invest in their own inner healing. That's part of the reason why we don't accept insurance, and we literally do a pledge-based system. We ask people to pray about what they think they're able to afford, and if it's $5 or $105, the answer is always yes. We never turn anybody away due to financial restraints. There's some people who can't afford anything, and our answer is still yes. The high cost of healthcare right now really keeps people from doing the work that they need to do to experience freedom and healing in their life.
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