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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 Pattern
Romantic love, for me, became a danger signal to my nervous system.
Most of the older family members I relied on either died, or left. Both of my parents were gone by the time I was 36. I felt unrooted, alone, and adrift. I was drawn to passionate men who mirrored my wounds rather than nurtured them. I tried to build stability with people who did not have the emotional capacity.
Looking back, I don’t think I even knew what “emotional stability” felt like. Year after year during the first third of my life, my family was plagued with loss and tragedy. Despite all of this, I kept showing up. I became a licensed therapist, opened my private practice, and tried to save others from the very pain I had survived.
Quite obviously, studying Mental Health and Family Therapy were THE match for me.
🌴 The Awakening
During COVID, I fled the scene. I left behind an office, a romantic relationship, and returned to my soul home— Miami, Florida. And that is when everything started to shift.
It began with a spontaneous reunion with my former partner, soulmate and dear friend, Peter. He was now battling advanced AML Leukemia. And of course I embraced him. I had also maintained a close relationship with Peter’s daughters.
I was a seasoned warrior, cancer nurse and therapist— and I truly cared.
We would have constant talks about the afterlife. He didn’t believe in it. I did. I started studying Reiki and mediumship. I wasn’t trying to become a healer or a medium, I just wanted to talk to him when he crossed over (plus I was totally fascinated). The pain of another loss became my doorway into the unseen realms of existence.
💃 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-years old women. It was a graceful. It was powerful. It was re-rooting. Watch Liz and Stefan
🇸🇪 The Viking
Enter: The Viking King. A 6’5” Swedish businessman I’d known as a friend for 16 years returned into my life after a 5 year silence. Just 4 months after Peter died, we reconnected and fell deeply in love. I left it all behind for him. I gave up my car, my home, my dance studio and moved to Sweden with my 3 small dogs. It was scary, magical and full of hope.
We lived out all seven parts of a dramatic story arc during our Stockholm-Miami fairy tale. But the emotional safety was hard to hold. There was a deep passionate love- but also issues that could not sustain longevity. Not all romances are built to last.
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The Rebirth
Not long after I returned from Sweden, I collapsed into grief. Hope lost is devastating. Shortly after all this, my 17-year-old Shih-Tzu, Surrey, became ill and died. I kept seeing clients. I kept smiling. I kept dancing. But inside, I was gone.
Nobody ever checks on “The Therapist”. I can’t tell you how many people shamed me for having feelings during the last 3 years. The statement “but you’re a therapist” to my attempts for a lifeline, a common response.
I attribute my championship level survival to Gd, the angels, spirit guides, my dogs, a few friends, and Bella. Bella became my earthly spirit guide, mentor, teacher and friend. She cared, she called, she rocks. I went within and figured out a way out.
I am the healer who had to save her own soul. The therapist who became her own client. The boxer who fought for herself. The woman who became her own stability in relationships.
From the depths of sorrow I rose. I came back to being the real me by shedding decades of grief and disappointment.
I realized that what happened to me did not define me- it revealed me. Everyone goes through their own hell, in their own way.
Orlando was right: nothing can break me.
🌀 I deepened my connection to myself and spirituality.
💫 I developed powerful energy healing gifts and learned to communicate with spirit guides.
🩵 I began guiding others through the very traumas I once survived.
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The Alchemy and The Work
I created UpliftMe™ Mental Health and Wellness to be a sanctuary of services for people like me— driven people who care so much they run themselves into the ground. Still breathing. Still seeking. Still believing in love. This isn’t just a business.
It’s the integration of my pathway to healing, wisdom, and professional collaboration of it all.
If you’re standing in the throws of emotional and physical disaster: I do care.