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MY STORY
The Making of a Healer
🥊 The Fighter
I’ve always had the heart of a Champion.
My first real fight came when my father Sid died at age 49 from Heart Disease. I was a mere 11-years-old. My mother was widowed at 41-years-old and left with 4 traumatized children and my father’s scrap business to run. More loss befell our family over the next 14 years. I lost my beloved Grandparents, my maternal Aunt and the most significant loss of them all- my favorite, Uncle Irv. Uncle Irv and I were always close, but after my father died, he bravely stepped in and took over. He was my best friend and my life-line. I was 25 years-old when he died. I was shattered.
Athletic by nature and relentless in spirit, I’ve carried a fighter’s mindset for as long as I can remember. From ages 26 to 32, I trained in a professional Miami Beach boxing gym, under Hall of Fame coach Orlando Cuellar. I was his only female client. While I never trained to compete, I might as well have.
“She was a lean mean boxing machine,” Orlando said. “I’ve trained her so that nothing can break her.”
But what no one could see beneath the gloves was that life had already broken me again and again. And somehow, I kept getting back up.
Boxing was the perfect metaphor for my life at that time. Watch Liz and Orlando
👩👧👧 The Caregiver
In 2006 everything changed. My mother was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer that spread to her brain and bones. My mother fought her fate for nearly 7 years, but in July of 2013 her condition took a critical down turn.
I left my doctoral studies at Barry University and returned home to Pittsburgh to provide my mother with end-of-life care. I watched the stoic woman who raised me, slowly fade over 4 months, all while trying to hold my own life together.
That experience shifted me. I began to understand grief on a cellular level. I had to rise to meet it. I had to dig way down deep to channel that kind of championship level strength from my soul.
End-of-life care and funeral arrangements were something I always saw as someone else’s job. But this time, I was the ‘someone else’. I gave my mother the best care up until her last breath- all while studying at the doctorate level and carrying a large book of clients.
The heart of a champion is revealed in its’ hardest tasks, not in the easy ones.
💃 The Dancer
One day, in the middle of counseling, caring for Peter (and his dog Lucky), a friend invited me to try a ballroom dance lesson. I walked into the ballroom studio— and unknowingly, walked into a whole new life chapter.
The studio owner and former champion dancer, Stefan Ilies, took my hand… and took over where boxing Coach Orlando had left off. In that studio, I found myself, my REAL self.
Peter was so sick from chemo that he napped at my house all day — just to have enough strength to attend my first dance performance. I wore a royal blue sequined dress for my “Conga” routine. Peter made it to the studio swollen from cancer meds, but glowing with pride. I am so grateful for that night.
I had found something that made me feel alive again. Peter could see that and encouraged me to keep going. After he died in 2022, dancing was the only thing that got me out of the house. The dance studio was the only place I still existed.
From 2021 to 2025, I advanced from Bronze to Open Gold, in Pro-Am Competitive Ballroom Dancing- an uncommon feat for a 46-year-old women. It was a graceful. It was powerful. It was re-rooting. Watch Liz and Stefan
I graduated from Barry University in 2012, with a dual masters degree in both Mental Health Counseling and Marriage and Family Therapy. I also completed coursework in Barry’s Doctoral Program. My professional experience is extensive. I have worked in Childhood Bereavement, and Inpatient Mental Health. BUT- for most of my career, I have been in Private Practice.