.png)
.png)
"greetings from across the pond."
"Greetings from across the pond."
.png)
_edited.png)
It all started with a MySpace message.
It started with a message from Pete that changed everything:
“Greetings from across the pond.”
Our connection was raw from the beginning.
Even from 4500 miles apart.
Through screens. Late nights.
There was no pretending.
No performing.
Just honesty.
The good.
The bad.
The messy truths about
who we really were.
And the more honest we were with each other,
the stronger it became.
_edited.png)
_edited.png)
From the outside, it looked like a fairy tale.
In many ways, it was.
But the most important part of our story wasn't falling in love.
It was what Pete quietly showed me about how I was meant to be treated.
The part most people didn’t see…
was what I had been allowing before him.
.png)
.png)
Our connection was raw from the beginning.
There was no pretending.
No performing.
Just honesty.
The good.
The bad.
The messy truths about
who we really were.
And the more honest we were with each other, the stronger
the connection became.
From the outside, it probably looked like a fairy tale.
In many ways, it was.
But the most important part of our story wasn't just falling in love.
It was what Pete quietly showed me about how people are supposed to be treated.
"greetings from across the pond."
.png)
.png)
It started with a message from Pete that changed everything:
“Greetings from across the pond.”
Our connection was raw from the beginning.
Even from 4500 miles apart.
Through screens. Late nights.
There was no pretending.
No performing.
Just honesty.
The good.
The bad.
The messy truths about
who we really were.
And the more honest we were with each other,
the stronger it became.
From the outside, it looked like a fairy tale.
In many ways, it was.
But the most important part of our story wasn't falling in love.
It was what Pete quietly showed me about how I was meant to be treated.
The part most people didn’t see…
was what I had been allowing before him.
Our connection was raw from the beginning.
There was no pretending.
No performing.
Just honesty.
The good.
The bad.
The messy truths about
who we really were.
And the more honest we were with each other, the stronger
the connection became.
From the outside, it probably looked like a fairy tale.
In many ways, it was.
But the most important part of our story wasn't just falling in love.
It was what Pete quietly showed me about how people are supposed to be treated.
The Part of the Story Most People Didn’t See
For most of my life, I didn’t think of myself as someone who struggled with boundaries.
I thought I was kind.
Understanding.
Flexible.
Easygoing.
Those traits made me a good person.
At least that's what I believed.
But over time, something was happening that I didn’t recognize at the time.
Without realizing it, I was slowly adjusting myself to keep everyone else comfortable.
_edited.png)
i was adjusting.
Adjusting what I said.
Adjusting what I allowed.
Adjusting what I needed.
Little by little, I was lowering the standard for how I allowed people to treat me.
Not because I lacked strength.
But because no one had ever shown me that boundaries were supposed to exist in the first place.
I didn’t lose myself all at once.
I lost myself one small compromise at a time.
THE FIRST TIME I SAW SOMETHING DIFFERENT
When Pete and I started building our life together, he noticed patterns in my life that I had never questioned.
But he never tried to change me.
He simply lived differently.
One of the first times I noticed it was something small.
A small moment I didn’t understand at the time
My family loved playing board games.
They were intense. Brutal about winning.
Pete played once.
Then the next time we were heading over, he calmly said he wasn't going to play.
At first, I assumed it meant he didn’t like my family.
But that wasn’t it at all.
He loved my family.
He just didn’t enjoy how he felt in that environment.
So he chose not to participate.
No drama.
No apology.
No attempt to make anyone else wrong.
Just a quiet decision about what worked for him.
At the time, I didn’t realize what I was seeing.
I only understood it years later.
Pete had been showing me something I had never been taught before.
That you can decide what you participate in.
That you can choose environments that feel healthy.
And that you can quietly set a standard for how you want to experience your life.
The First Boundaries
Were the Hardest
Understanding boundaries is one thing.
Living them is another.
For years after my divorce, my ex-husband still had a hold on my emotional well-being.
We had been together, on and off, from the time I was 20 until I was 33, and even long after the marriage ended, the dynamic hadn’t really changed.
Every conversation left me exhausted.
He used our children to manipulate conversations.
He pushed past emotional lines again and again.
And somehow, I kept tolerating it.
I told myself it was just part of co-parenting.
Until one day something happened that crossed a line.
Through our son, he sent a message that felt threatening — not just toward me, but toward Pete as well.
And suddenly something became very clear.
I was standing in my own home, nearly a decade after the divorce, and this man still had the power to disturb my peace.
That was the moment Pete gently said something that changed everything.
“You can change this.”
He walked me through setting my first real boundary.
From that point forward, communication would only happen through email.
No calls.
No texts.
And only discussions that related to the kids.
Nothing else.
The first time I enforced that boundary was terrifying.
But something remarkable happened.
My ex-husband learned very quickly that the boundary was real.
And eventually, I never had to speak with him again.
I was 44 years old the first time I set a real boundary.
And it changed my life.
I will never forget that day
.png)
.png)
I will never forget that day.
Later that day, after I sent the message, I had my workout and I remember it vividly. Not because it was different than any other workout.
But because I felt different.
Earlier that day I had been sitting in the corner of my living room, scared and crying.
Pete talked me through it, calmly reminding me that I didn’t have to live this way anymore.
For the first time, I felt what it was like to choose peace instead of tolerance.
That moment didn’t just change my relationship with my ex. It changed the way I understood my own power.
And in many ways, it marked the beginning of a new direction in my life.
Not long after that, I began stepping away from the work I had been doing in real estate, and moving toward something that felt more aligned with what I was experiencing.
I didn’t know exactly what it would become yet.
But I knew something important had started.
When you’ve walked through something and come out the other side, you don’t just have a story… you carry a responsibility.
I knew I was called to empower women.
the second boundary
Just a few months later came the next one.
Christmas morning.
For my entire life, Christmas morning had always been spent at my parents’ house.
When I was married.
When I was a single mom.
Even after Pete and I built our own family.
It was simply what I had always done.
One day we were sitting in a Home Depot parking lot about to buy a Christmas tree when I said something out loud.
“I wish we could just stay home Christmas morning.”
Pete looked at me and asked a simple question.
“Why can’t we?”
My answer came instantly.
“Because we go to mom's on Christmas morning.”
And in that moment I realized something I had never questioned before.
Just because something has always been done a certain way doesn’t mean it has to stay that way.
Pete encouraged me to call my mom right then and let her know about the change. So I did.
I told her we would be starting our own Christmas morning tradition at home and suggested we meet later that day, or another day that worked for her.
It didn’t go well at first.
She was hurt.
Disappointed.
Offended.
For a while our conversations stayed close to the surface.
But I held the boundary.
The next couple of Christmases she still invited us Christmas morning, hoping we might come.
And each time we kindly declined.
Eventually, she stopped asking.
And something important happened.
Our relationship didn’t end.
It changed.
For the first time, my mom wasn’t just relating to me as her daughter.
She was relating to me as a woman with a family and traditions of my own.
And our relationship became healthier because of it.
For the first time, I realized I wasn’t choosing between loving my mom and loving my own family.
I was simply choosing to build my own life.
WHAT HAPPENED AFTER THAT
Those two boundaries changed everything.
Because I had finally learned something I had never been taught before:
You can decide how people treat you.
You can decide what you allow into your life.
You can decide the standards that shape your relationships.
Once those first boundaries were set, something unexpected happened.
Life became simpler.
I no longer felt responsible for managing everyone else’s reactions.
I stopped over-explaining my decisions.
I stopped carrying problems that were never mine to solve.
Instead of constantly reacting to other people’s expectations, I began living from a place of clarity about my own.
That shift didn’t just change my relationships.
It changed the environment of our entire home.
Over the last decade, Pete and I have raised our children with the same principles that changed my life.
They understand something many adults were never taught:
Their lives belong to them.
Their voice matters.
And the way they allow themselves to be treated is something they get to decide.
Why We Created This Work
The framework that changed my life is the same one Pete shares in
How To Teach People How To Treat You.
Pete developed the method.
I lived the transformation.
Together, we realized something important.
So many women are living the same patterns I lived for years:
Over-giving.
Over-adjusting.
Over-explaining.
Not because they lack strength.
But because no one has ever shown them how to hold a standard.
This book exists to change that.
What began as a small beta course eventually became something bigger.
Women Becoming Empowered grew from a simple realization:
Boundaries don’t just change relationships.
They change how women see themselves.
Through this work, our mission is simple:
To help women rebuild self-respect, raise their standards, and create lives that reflect their worth.
Because once you understand how boundaries actually work,
you finally experience the freedom that comes from knowing your life belongs to you.
Because once you understand how boundaries actually work,
you stop managing everyone else’s expectations…
and start living in freedom.
Because once you understand how boundaries actually work,
you stop managing everyone else’s expectations…and start living in freedom.