Kerstin
Pelletier
Certified Life & Health Coach
“You must be the change you wish to see in the world.”
~Mahatma Gandhi~
Welcome!! I am very happy to meet you and appreciate your taking the time to visit my website. I would like to take this opportunity to introduce myself. My name is Kerstin Pelletier. My first name was the first thing in life that helped me to learn to “let things go” and to be resilient, as it is not pronounced at all the way it is spelled. My name is from my Swedish heritage and is pronounced “Sharestin”. Since I was a small child, I have had to explain my name to everyone I meet, with the exception of when I am visiting Scandinavia. Most of my childhood was spent in the country near a small town called Buck Lake, Alberta in Canada. There I learned many things including the joy of leading a simple life without a lot of material belongings. We played outside and this is where I learned to love nature. I am very grateful for my upbringing in the country with all the trees I was surrounded by. When I was in my early teens, my parents went through a very challenging divorce.
At this time, I was struggling with anorexia nervosa and bulimia. My brother and I stayed with my dad for the first year and a half after my parent’s separation. My dad’s business was an hour from home and sometimes he stayed away overnight. We lived, by bus, ninety minutes from school. I became very responsible at a young age as my brother is younger than I am and I took on the responsibility of ensuring that he was taken care of, got to/from school, and made sure we had proper meals, clean laundry, and a clean house. After a year and a half of living with my dad, my brother and I made the move to a much larger center where my mom was now living. It was a bit of a shell shock for me to go from a class of six of us in grade ten to over four hundred students in my new high school. These changes also helped me to learn more about being resilient. During and after high school, I worked in various jobs including fast food, insurance, and the nonprofit sector.
I was married in my early twenties to a wonderful man who became the father of my daughter. Sadly, after nine years of marriage, our relationship ended. I became a single mom when my daughter was two. Wanting to give her the best life possible, and be there for her as much as I could, I left my insurance career of twelve years and tried a couple of different jobs in hopes of finding more balance. Working for other people made it challenging to have the flexibility I desired in order to be the best mom I could be. So, I decided to upgrade my education. I took Chemistry 30 and then proceeded to go to university for one year of a Bachelor of Science degree. I was considering nursing or being a dietician, as I wanted to help others and I had the desire to help young women overcome eating disorders, as I had overcome an eating disorder myself. I realized after my first year of university that being a single mom and getting a degree was going to be super challenging, and I was not sure if the job at the end of my schooling was going to give me the balance I hoped to achieve.
I felt a bit lost but then decided to become a Registered Massage Therapist. This career choice ended up affording me the freedom and balance I was hoping for as a single parent. It was a great career. I took two years of schooling and then was able to start my own business. I loved being able to help others and my business grew very quickly. It wasn’t long before I wasn’t able to take on new clients any longer, and I was able to run my business from my home. This made being a single parent all the better, as now I could be home when my daughter was not at school. During this time, I outgrew the first home I had purchased as I wanted to expand my business and have another massage therapist work with me. I then bought another home with a basement suite which I was able to turn into a massage clinic. It was a perfect set up and this home was closer to my daughter’s new school. I was able to have another massage therapist work with me and my income was such that I could afford to take my daughter on many trips. The experiences we shared together were amazing! Once my daughter was in high school, she started to work outside of the home and also had a steady boyfriend. At this point, I decided that I would try dating again.
I was only online dating for about two weeks when I met someone whom I really connected with. We had a storybook romance and were engaged about two years after we started dating. Shortly after being engaged, the pandemic started. Our original plan had been to be married on New Year’s Eve almost a year after being engaged. With the uncertainty of the pandemic, we moved our wedding up to August 2020. In October of that same year, my daughter (who had recently moved out into her own apartment at the young age of seventeen) experienced some extreme trauma. I did all I could as a mother to help her both emotionally and financially through that very challenging time. On top of dealing with that, Covid-19 shut down my massage business and I had little to no income. At about this same time, my new husband was struggling with a great amount of stress due to the nature of his business and the pandemic, and the stress brought out characteristics in him that I had not previously experienced. My health began to suffer. I was struggling immensely with severe chronic pain, debilitating fatigue, fainting spells, as well as various other health issues. When the pandemic rules were lifted and I was able re-open my massage clinic, I was unable to work due to my health. At one point I was bedridden and could hardly get down the hall to the bathroom. At first, they thought I had Lupus, but after seeing several specialists they determined that I had fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, hypothyroidism, IBS, GERD, restless leg syndrome, and very low blood pressure.
Along with these health ailments, I was also struggling financially, was continuing to deal with the aftermath of the stress of my daughter’s post-trauma, and I was now needing to exercise tough love. We were still dealing with the pandemic, as well as I was navigating the extreme stress of my new marriage and the changes in my partner. One of the medications that the doctors put me on for chronic pain had a side effect of suicidal ideation, and along with that medication and the extreme duress I was under, I now felt that life was not worth living. I actually had the plan to end my life. In November of 2021, I woke up in the middle of the night in extreme pain. I asked the Universe to help me. I got a clear message that I was to heal my life by seeking out a Reiki practitioner, as well as to become a health and life coach. This was the beginning of that part of my journey. By January 2022, things were really not well in my marriage. I had gut feelings about many things, but couldn’t prove anything. I wanted us to get away and go on a belated honeymoon to try to rekindle our romance, but my husband said he didn’t have the time. For my own healing, I needed to get away, so I went to Mexico by myself for a month. My husband said he would try to join me but never did. While I was there, everything that I had felt in my gut was exposed to me like the Universe handing me a golden platter. It became crystal clear that I needed to end my marriage. While in Mexico, and having this extreme clarity, I was able to have my husband leave my house. I came back and filed immediately for a divorce.
Due to my health and financial situation, I felt it was necessary to sell my home and the majority of my belongings in order to pay off the debts that were incurred and to start over freshly. During this time, I had to trust and believe in myself and my strong intuition. I also had to face my fears of the guilt and shame of ending another marriage and put myself first. Self-care had already been my top priority since falling ill, but now I had to take care of myself in a different way. Self-love and care that is beyond rest, journaling, meditation, yoga, and warm baths. I had to stand up for myself and know that I am worth it and that I deserve to be in a healthy relationship. I had to scream out to the Universe – “I am willing to let go!” “I am willing to surrender!” “Please guide me!” The Universe did not disappoint and I was able to sell my house before the market “crashed”. I had so many wonderful people come forward to help me with the preparation of selling my house and belongings and with my move. I sold all I could and was given the opportunity to move to my aunt and uncle’s RV out at Buck Lake, very close to where I grew up. The band-aid had been proverbially ripped off and I was going to live the simple life I had been trying to manifest. Unfortunately, with my health being the way it was and not being able to work or exercise like I used to, I also gained about forty pounds.
I had to put that aside and not worry about it, as I had to concentrate on important things like my health and well-being. I learned through this process to no longer identify myself as to what I do, where I live, how I look, or what I own, but rather only to be who I AM, which is my deeper presence and stillness. I was blessed to live in a quiet setting by the lake in an RV, off-grid, for a few months. Then, the Universe guided me to an opportunity to go to Mexico for the winter, where I am currently residing. My story is long, but I tell it so that you might understand what I have been through and how I have healed my life. I am now walking, on average, 20,000 steps per day. Not long ago, I could hardly crawl down the hallway to the bathroom. I have lost fifteen pounds and am continuing to lose more. I have diligently worked to become certified as both a health and life coach, and am excited to launch my new career. I am also a certified teacher for “The Clarity Catalyst”, which is one of the wonderful courses that helped me (along with counseling, life coaching, and various other healing modalities) to heal emotionally and start to dream again. Most importantly, I went through the “dark night of the soul”, survived it, and had what I like to compare to a “metamorphosis”.
It was a rebirth of some sort, you might say. It was a spiritual transformation for which I am extremely grateful and that saved my life. I learned more valuable lessons in this past year than I have in my entire life of personal growth and development. The learning has been profound and I want to share the gifts I was given with other women to help them to experience what I have, and those benefits are more ease, joy, peace, clarity, creativity, calmness, courage, authenticity, gratitude, resilience, wisdom, intuition, compassion, empathy, love, trust, connection, purpose, inspiration, self-love, ability to process emotions, light, surrender, positivity, stillness, ability to hold space for others, flow, improved ability to set boundaries, and improved relationships. Mostly, I learned to live in the present moment, no longer in the past nor in the future, and to see all “challenges” as gifts that are given to us to help us to grow. On the flip side, I now have less worry, stress, sadness, anger, reactivity, negativity, and pain. Thank you for joining me on this beautiful journey. I hope that I can help to enrich your life and guide you to experience your own metamorphosis