Born on a Monday

Note: If you want to get a sense of where I’m at and who I am, this “2024 summary” blog post will probably help.

Hi, I am Marie LePage and I am a homo sapiens sapiens. Since 2020, I have been making some deep self- and relationship-understanding efforts around my biofamily as well as religious and gender social experiences which shaped how I present myself and how I think. I have been working to heal myself from what my nervous system learned within painful and unsafe situations throughout life.

My childhood family system inherited religious conservativism as well as emotional repression. My psyche was sculpted by evangelical Christianity communities in the 80’s and 90’s in white, middle class, midwestern USA. I’ve never truly felt okay or safe internally or externally, which for decades I thought was “normal” and what everyone else was experiencing. But it turned out my experiences created an experience within me that the psychological industry calls “complex post traumatic stress disorder”. Most of my life has been overwhelming and mentally exhausting due to the internal noise of profound shame, existential shock and terror, and fear/unfamiliarity of my own thoughts, feelings, and body. I’ve spent decades miserable, ruminating, lost in my mind, masking in society, disconnected from my body, angry at religion, angry at my family, distrustful of the world and pessimistic about the future. And I masked most of that, even from myself.

In the fall of 2020, out of desperation, I tried psilocybin for the first time and experienced a vivid self-awareness to a depth I hadn’t felt in decades, confusing me (an experience I was unable to explain for 4 years). I was conditioned to not observe and never explicitly learned what thoughts, emotions, sensations, and feelings (interoception) were nor the messages they carried. Since 2020, I have fought very hard to just choose to stay alive as this psychological reality unrooting was terrifying. Though, it’s allowed me to begin to re-integrate myself, understanding my childhood experiences and why I had to psychologically/emotionally/somatically protect myself. This process has involved forms of despair such as derealization, depersonalization, constant anxiety, fearing I am insane, and suicidal ideation.

Though the bulk of my time since 2020 has been incredibly derealized and terrifying, I eventually led myself to learn about emotional literacy. I began to understand that the teachings from my childhood usurped my familiarity with my own internal, private experience of myself. Learning about emotions, feelings, and somatic awareness has been like finally getting a vision prescription I desperately needed. I am able to interpret the world inside and outside of me with more compassion, precision, and context, allowing me to live a life that truly fits better who I am at any given moment in any given situation.

The process has given me a perspective that allows me to see what others are going through and help them see it as well. I have made some major strides in pulling my Self back together and I want to help (“coach”??) others who are on this journey, too.

This is the coaching work that I do. In my own process, I have seen the effectiveness of deep listening and understanding; non-hierarchical and candid/frank support; supporting the development of autonomy, intuition, and awareness; and nervous system regulation techniques. I bring all of this personal, embodied knowledge with me in my coaching. I do not seek to become a licensed therapist nor credentialed coach. I am offer myself to you as a candid, authentic, living-it-myself human who will be honest with you and treat you with the respect and autonomy you deserve and have regardless of whether you believe you do. I will share from my own pain and experience as well. Within myself, I nurture (not only in sessions with clients but every moment I can for myself) curiosity, presence, awareness, honesty, openmindedness, non-judgment, and acceptance.

If you like qualifications, here’s some stuff for ya. I administered and facilitated of an ex-religious support group in the Twin Cities for over 10 years. I have also led breakout sessions at MNPolyCon, facilitated a support group for ethical non-monogamy practitioners, and began the Dying Out Loud movement with Dave Warnock. I served on the Board of MNPoly from 2022-2023. Additionally, I run/have run my own entrepreneurial endeavors in podcasting, photography, life coaching, blogging, public speaking, and making art!