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Writer's pictureCerissa Leese

I'm Starting Over at 41 (EEK!!)

It's actually a little scary to write that!

Woman fixing hair in mirror using hairspray
Me at the height of my hair career.

For the last 20 years I've worked as a hairstylist. I've had an amazing career as a hairstylist, with so many clients and friends and colleagues to support me on my journey. It's a career that allowed me the confidence to not only figure out who I am as a person, but also forgive myself for things in the past. People always say that hairstylists are like therapists, but what they don't say is how much healing the clients can offer the stylist as well. It's two decades well spent.


But, when I got sidelined with a surgery last year, I spent 12 weeks on the couch reflecting on my life. I had been feeling for a while that something was missing. I was no longer getting that "spark" I used to get when I walked into the salon. Don't get me wrong, I loved seeing my people, but it just wasn't the same. So, on my time off I really spent time thinking about what my goals had been when I was in high school. When I was asked as a kid or teen what I wanted to do with my life, hairstylist wasn't it. It wasn't even something on my radar.


What was on my radar, however, was helping people in some kind of health capacity. I remember being a kid and reading my mom's Grey's Anatomy book. I was completely fascinated by all the layers and structures of the body and would lay there for hours studying the photos. In high school, I started studying nutrition and became fascinated with how what we put in our body can either heal it or harm it. As a hairstylist, I learned how ingredients that we put on our body can not only harm our skin's surface, but absorb into it causing long term damage (not to mention the environmental impact).


In 2020, at the beginning of the Covid shut downs, I started feeling a kind of anxiousness that I'd never felt. The fear of the unknown was debilitating me and I knew I needed to do something about it. So, me being me, I became a meditation teacher! That led me down another road of fascination, this time with how a mindful and gracious attitude can actually make your body healthier.


All of this knowledge that I had accumulated through sheer fascination over the years had just been sitting in my brain doing nothing for most of my life. And so I decided that it was time to do something about that.


post surgery abdomen scars
Post surgery scars. I had 5 abdominal, 1 bellybutton, and multiple internal stitches.

As I sat on the couch, recovering from my surgery, I enrolled in a program with the National Academy of Sports Medicine and became a certified personal trainer and nutrition coach. I started working at a gym to get some experience. I shadowed other trainers, read some books, and took a few online courses. But there was still something missing.


As a trainer, the focus is purely on structured exercise. With everything I had learned up until then, I knew that this was only a small piece of the health puzzle. Despite my best efforts to incorporate other things like nutrition or meditation into my client sessions, it wasn't enough to positively impact my client's journeys simply because of a lack of time. I also knew that change needed to happen if I wanted to do something about it.

woman sitting on picnic table wearing fitness gear
Me now :)

I turned in my notice to the gym, signed up with a business coach, and began the process of starting over. From being that little kid on the floor looking at anatomy pictures, to now being a multi-certified health coach, I'm starting over at 41 and building a whole new business from scratch as Your Healthy Habit Coach.


Since this is just a blog, and not a novel, I'll share more about what that will look like later, but for now, make sure you're on the email list to stay up to date with the newest information as it rolls out.


Thanks for being here, and thanks for being part of my journey.


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