From Parking Lot
to Purpose.
This is the story I almost didn't live to tell. And the reason I tell it is because I know you might be living a version of it right now.
I want to start somewhere most people don't. Not with my credentials. Not with my books. Not with what I've built or who wrote the foreword.
I want to start with the truth about where I came from because if you're reading this, I don't think you came here for a polished bio. I think you came here because something in your life is broken and you need to know that someone else has been in the dark and actually found their way back.
So here it is.
What I Learned Before I Was Old Enough to Know I Was Learning It
I grew up watching my father beat my mother.
I didn't have a word for it then. I just knew that love looked like chaos. That the person who was supposed to protect you could also be the person who hurt you the most. I filed that away somewhere deep the way children do and I carried it forward into every relationship I would have for the next several decades without ever understanding why I kept ending up in the same place.
That's the thing about childhood wounds. You don't choose to carry them. You just do. And they shape every decision you make who you trust, who you love, how much pain you're willing to accept before you finally say enough until the day someone helps you drag them into the light and call them by name.
For me, that day didn't come until I was 41 years old.
The Moment Everything Cracked Open
At 41, I wanted to help people. I had always wanted to help people. So I started training to become a Stephen Minister a lay counselor, someone who walks alongside others through their darkest seasons.
But before you can counsel someone else, you have to sit in the chair yourself.
And when I sat in that chair, something I had buried for a very long time came up to the surface. Old pain. Childhood pain. The kind you don't even realize you've been dragging around because it became so familiar it just felt like you.
I became dependent on the counselor in an unhealthy way. When he put distance between us eventually a restraining order I didn't know how to handle the pain. I had never felt it fully before. I had always found a way around it.
Someone in one of my sessions had mentioned alcohol. How it numbed things. I had never been a drinker. But I was desperate. So I tried it.
I ended up drunk underneath his car. I had alcohol poisoning.
When he finally met with me face to face one last time and told me he never wanted to see me again I went into a bathroom. My son was a Type 1 diabetic. I used his insulin to try to end my life.
My husband found me.
The Long Road That Came After
I survived.
And for a long time, I wasn't sure if that was a gift or a sentence.
From there I went into group therapy. It was there in those rooms, surrounded by other broken people trying to find their footing that I met the man who would become my boyfriend. My fiancé. The relationship I would spend the next 14 years of my life trying to leave.
I want to be honest with you about something. I didn't stay because I was stupid. I didn't stay because I didn't know better. I stayed because chaos felt like home. Because somewhere in my nervous system, love and pain had been introduced in the same breath before I was old enough to tell them apart.
I had watched my mother love a man who hurt her. That wasn't a lesson I chose to learn. It was just what love looked like from where I was standing as a little girl.
So I stayed. And I tried to leave. And I stayed again. For 14 years it was on and off him leaving, me asking him back, me leaving, him coming back. That cycle has a name. And if you've lived it, you already know exactly what I'm talking about.
The Day I Finally Chose Myself Out Loud
The final break didn't happen quietly. It didn't happen in a private conversation or a carefully written letter.
It happened on a stage. In front of a room full of people. In Florida. In 2017.
I was at a seminar. The speaker pulled me up in front of the crowd and walked me through a series of questions the kind that cut straight through every excuse and defense you've built up over the years. And then he said: call him. Right now. From this stage. End it.
So I did.
I called the man I had spent 14 years loving and leaving and going back to. With a microphone in my hand. With a room full of strangers witnessing it in real time.
And I ended it.
I don't think I could have done it any other way. Every time I had tried in private, the door stayed cracked open. But this time I had witnesses. This time there was no going back. This time I finally chose myself loudly, publicly, permanently.
That phone call changed everything.
What I Know Now That I Wish I'd Known Then
Here is what I want you to hear especially if you are somewhere in the middle of your own version of this story:
You are not broken. You are patterned. And patterns can be changed.
What happened to me the childhood, the codependency, the toxic relationship, the years of self-sabotage none of it was random. It was a chain. A generational chain of women in my family who loved deeply and were handed pain in return. My mother. Me.
I am the one who broke it.
Not because I was stronger than they were. But because I finally got the right help, did the right work, and found a framework that gave me a way to rebuild from the inside out. I call it The LORI Factor. It stands for Larger vision, Optimism, Reinvention, and Invest in yourself. Every letter came out of something I actually had to fight to learn. This isn't theory. It's testimony.
I went on to write two books. I earned the attention of Les Brown one of the most respected motivational voices in the world who read my story and chose to write the foreword to my book. I became a certified speaker and breakthrough coach. I have been featured in magazines and publications across the country. I have stood on stages and told this story to rooms full of women who needed to hear it.
And every single time, someone comes up to me afterward and says:
"I thought I was the only one."
You are not the only one.
Why I Do This Work
I do this because I know what it costs to stay stuck. I paid that price for a very long time.
I do this because I know that the woman who is reading this right now the one who has survived something, who is still carrying it, who knows she is meant for more but cannot figure out how to get there she doesn't need another motivational quote. She needs a map. She needs someone who has walked the road before her and can say: this way. I know this way.
That's what I am. That's what The LORI Factor is.
If you are at the beginning of your journey, know this: the inner work is not easy. But it is the only work that actually changes anything. And you do not have to do it alone.
I am living proof that it is possible to break free. To rebuild. To step into the life you were always meant to live.
And so are you.
A Voice You Can Trust
These aren't credentials I earned in a classroom. They're markers of a journey.
- — Published author of Hole to Whole and The LORI Factor (foreword by Les Brown)
- — Featured in 585 Magazine, Rochester Woman Online, Lifestyles After 50, and more
- — Guest on multiple podcasts speaking on toxic relationships, self-sabotage, and transformation
- — Certified speaker and breakthrough coach
- — Co-author in multiple collaborative books including a collaboration with Kevin Harrington of Shark Tank
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