I reached the top of everything I'd worked for —
and felt absolutely nothing.
I spent six years building toward a dream I'd had since childhood — becoming a professional chef. I grew up obsessed with the Food Network, playing kitchen, and holding myself to a standard most adults couldn't match. In my first year of culinary school, a speaker mentioned winning a Top 30 Under 30 award for best chefs in Ontario. That was it. The goal was set.
In 2018, at 24 years old, I made that list. And I felt empty.
At the same time, my mom's cancer treatment had stopped working. I was commuting 80+ minutes a day, working 12-hour shifts, running on fumes. Then one night I rear-ended a car at a gas station. My mom picked up my frantic call and said quietly: "Laurie, when are you going to listen to the universe trying to tell you to slow down?"
$1,500 out of pocket later, I sat down on my meditation cushion. What I found there changed everything — images and messages I couldn't explain. Details about my mom's childhood bedroom. Things I had no way of knowing.
I didn't run from it. I ran toward it. I joined a mediumship group, completed all three levels of Reiki, and became obsessed with one question: how did I become who I am — and how do I unbecome it?
When COVID closed the kitchens in 2020, I started giving readings over Zoom for free. Two months later I was hired by my mentor. Two weeks after that, I left a six-year relationship, my mom was hospitalized, and I was packing a moving truck in full identity crisis on my boss's spare bedroom floor.
My mom passed away in June 2021. Days later I was evicted. I moved to a new city — less than a kilometre from the man who is now my husband — and was connected to people who became like family, to friends, and people who I still work with to this day.
God dismantled my life so I could build a better one. My mom helped from the other side. I now have a deep, unshakeable trust in things falling apart to fall together — which is exactly why I can hold space for you when you're in the messy middle of it. I'm not guiding you from theory. I'm guiding you from the other side of it.