Hello – I’m Krista O’Reilly-Davi-Digui (she/her). Welcome to my corner of the noisy internet!
A synopsis of some of the lived experience I bring to my work:
- Highly sensitive, strongly introverted, wholly affirming mom of 3 beautiful and creative humans, 2 of whom are/were members of the LGBTQ+ community. My kids have taught me so much and have helped me heal, even as I love and support them, and become a far wiser and kinder person (and I’m still/always very much in progress).
- Lost my son to suicide/severe depression; lived experience with PTSD + dissociation + panic disorder after his death, depression + suicidality and disordered eating in my younger years, Hashimoto’s, chronic pain, and a vicious inner critic. I care deeply about helping to build a kinder, safer world for those who fall through the cracks, who don’t fit into the narrow box of prescribed “success” or palatability and can’t keep up with hustle/more is better culture so feel like they’re never “enough”, those who struggle and question and forget that they (we) are loved, beautiful, gifted, and needed. I want to help expand the tent.
- Interracial marriage, biracial kids, married 28 years to a kind, hard-working, and loving man from West-Africa (we met in the laundry room at Université Laval, Québec). Our relationship has involved hard work, joy, and consciously moving toward each other through traumatic loss. I’m grateful we get to navigate life together.
- Come from a motley family of 14 + love my gorgeous multicultural extended family.
- Left evangelicalism (where I never fit) and have come back home to my roots of justice, equity, and a soul-sustaining way of being in the world. I enjoy working with people for whom faith or spirituality matters but are untangling themselves from unhealthy beliefs and conditioning, breaking chains, and finding their way to freedom (as I walk my talk).
- Studied education, homeschooled 16 years, nested and raised a family (dream no.1), returned to school + started my business in my 40s to help other women befriend themselves and feel safe and at home in their bodies and their lives (dream no.2), and signed a contract for my first book which has yet to be written (dream no.3). I get goose bumps when my clients begin loving the fullness of their messy + beautiful selves and tell the truth about what they want and need for wholeness and joy.
- At 50, in spite of learning to live without my son and still healing emotionally and physically, I’m the strongest, most honest, and integrated version of myself that I’ve ever been. And I am PROUD of myself for all the hard work it’s taken to get here. We are all always in progress and it is a great privilege to come alongside other brave, curious, and weary humans as we journey together toward greater healing and freedom.
Stay connected through my (mostly) Monday morning emails. You’ll also get my PDF of 30 tips for when you’re feeling stressed or stuck and my Feel More Empowered Workshop!
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what i really want you to know is …
1. You’re not bad, wrong, or broken or a problem to be fixed. Befriend yourself exactly who and how you are: a messy tangle of strength and struggle just like the rest of us. An imperfect and beautiful life in progress. Human in a messy world.
2. Quiet the noise of comparison, perfectionism, fear, shame, and your mean inner critic and learn to trust yourself, attune to your inherent mind-emotion-body wisdom, and respond bravely and with compassion to what you hear!
3. Life “shouldn’t” feel neat and tidy; railing against the reality of life keeps us in suffering. Learning to make peace with paradox and practice the truth of both/and is freeing and empowering: Joy and pain coexist in a brave and beautiful life if we allow it.
4. Reorient or re-envision your life. This is a form of hope-in-action and keeps you anchored and resilient. Slow and steady you can handcraft a life that feels like home and tells the whole truth of who you are and what you want/need (+ the world you want to live in).
5. Life is more cyclical than linear, about going deeper not wider, and there’s wisdom and beauty to be mined in every season, even the hardest of them. Loosen your grip, show up curious, and learn to honour your wiring through a sustainable practice of seasonal living.
6. We heal/grow/become at the speed of safety*: learn to process stress and grief, regulate your nervous system, and expand your window of capacity in order to show up whole, integrated, and in integrity to your messy and beautiful life.
7. To walk in freedom and feel safe, at home, and joyful in your body and your life you must reclaim your voice and your agency, embody a new story for your life, and trust that we grow into the strength that we need for each season.
*”We heal at the speed of safety.” – Linda Thai
I have a clear and compelling vision for my life and for who and how I choose to be in the world. My life vision and all of the choices I make, who I spend time with, the work I do in the world, all flow out from my core values. These values are freedom, integrity, curiosity, brave community, and contribution.
Krista xo
My life has been a journey of learning to love and care for myself well. A journey to freedom.
I used to have an addictive personality and this got me into trouble until I learned to live fully conscious, eyes and heart wide open. I have walked through suicide attempts, anxiety, PTSD and severe panic disorder, intense chronic pain, child loss & deep grief, disordered eating & body shame. Not necessarily in that order.
For most of my life, I did not find living easy. I needed to consciously choose to live every single day.
I was in grade six the first time I drank alcohol and grade seven the first time I used drugs in an attempt to calm my anxiety. Though I dumped alcohol and drugs at 21 years old, I kept moving from one addictive pattern to another because I hadn’t yet learned how to calm the storm inside of me.
I was looking for freedom but kept picking up another set of chains.
Along the way, I’ve learned that joy and pain can coexist and that life does not have to be perfect to be beautiful. That I do not have to be perfect to be beautiful and worthy of life and love and good things.
I’ve learned to forgive myself for all my struggle and messiness, learned to approve of myself, and realized that I am far stronger, braver and more resilient than I ever understood before. I’ve put down deep, hardy roots of self-awareness and self-compassion and learned to take imperfect action through fear to build the life and business I want. I now help my clients do this life-giving work.
Honouring Our Wiring to Build a Kinder World
My background is in French Immersion Education, I spent years homeschooling and raising a strong & stubborn family, and then in my 40s returned to school and built a business. Today I build brave community and serve clients from around the globe as a Writer, Holistic Embodiment Coach, and Joyful Living Educator.
My work is for the freedom-seeker, truth-teller, stubborn questioner, anxious, highly sensitive, non-hustler, or brave + weary human ready to befriend yourself and exchange judgment for curiosity, shame for self-compassion, and fear for agency.
I work part-time and constantly walk out the tension between my love of a new learning curve with my need for rest and permission to simply BE. I’m not interested in hustle or constantly striving for more or better. I require ample solitude and calm, an abundance of rest, and swaths of unscheduled time in order to feel body, mind, spirit healthy. I want space in my life to savor, breathe, and connect.
One of my core motivations is building a kinder, safer world for ALL people, including my children. A world that does a far better job of honouring the beauty of diversity in its varied shapes and forms instead of trying to squish us all into a joy-crushing and sometimes life-threatening box.
For those of you geeky folk like me, I’m a strong introvert, hopeful reformer, and stubborn questioner with rebel leanings, ISFJ (often mistaken for an IN), a Highly Sensitive Person, and Enneagram 1 living an integrated life these days.
I tried hard for much of my life to quell my fear and pain by ordering my world with rigidity, in searching for the perfect 7 steps to wholeness, in jumping through hoops, following the rules, seeking safety in reason and black and white. It didn’t work.
These days, I live rooted, awake, willing, in the messy in-between. I love a good evidence-base and also make room for mystery and not knowing. Our understanding of the world, our bodies, what it means to be human, of science in general is in constant evolution and we only see in part. I refuse to live in a box. My experience does not fit neat and tidy into a box.
a hope map for a brave + beautiful life
I think STORY as much as truth-telling is healing and believe that by sharing our stories we break the power of shame and bravely lift up the light of hope & encouragement for each other. I am changed by story – largely because it is “descriptive, not prescriptive.” It makes space for us to ponder, grapple with, and then find the application to our own life.
Story also matters because as Brené Brown says, “If you don’t turn toward a painful story and own it, that story will own you.”
As such, although I spend a lot of time in research and distilling big ideas into practical application for my community, my blog is primarily a tool for sharing stories and encouragement to remind you that you are not alone. That you are not the only one who struggles. That there is hope.
I take all my struggle, strength, and study and offer it to remind you that you matter. You are worthy of acceptance, compassion, and JOY right now in the full truth of who and how you are: Messy and beautiful. Weary and brave.
Not if you lose 50 pounds, when you get your anxiety under control, when no one you love struggles, you never wrestle with comparison or shame, when your life is Instagram-perfect, or some magical day when you feel perfectly pulled together. You matter right now in the middle of the storm.
From one brave, weary, and curious human to another, you are welcome here.
Krista xo
NOW WHAT? I invite you to The HOPE Map, a weekly sprinkle of hope and encouragement to help nourish you from the roots up.
