About Me

“An essential foundation for any woman’s positive sense of self and long-term happiness is listening closely to her own heart/soul and living a life true to HERself.” –Alison Carrey

I tip-toed into the blogging world in 2013, having fun and making many mistakes along the way. Over the years, I was inconsistent and unsure, but I was proud I took the risk and just gave blogging a try.

My initial posts were about healthy eating because that was the primary focus in my life at the time. Today, things are different.

Healthy eating is still important to me (I’m still working on that), but something much more foundational has rooted itself in my purpose.

And that is…

what and how I think.

Most of us live on autopilot without realizing we’re functioning based on a program installed during our childhood and young adult life (by parents, other adults and society). 

Although we pepper our lives with our own personality and interests, most of what we do, and how we live, is based on what we learned as the right way to do things or the safe way to do things. 

I’m not saying the programming was all bad. What I am saying is that during that programming, some of us didn’t learn to value ourselves

As a child, I learned/perceived that…

• I had to please others to be liked/loved
• I was better off not rocking the boat and upsetting others
• I was not good enough the way I was
• It was not ok to speak up or stand up for myself
• I should avoid conflict

What’s on your list?

The thing is, those beliefs we unknowingly ingrained in our brains as children stayed with us. That’s the problem with the programming; it runs in the background, and we don’t even realize it.

I had no idea my inner child had absorbed all those messages on my list. It’s only been in recent years, and especially in recent months, that I’ve become aware of the tremendous impact those learned beliefs have on my life.

Those limiting beliefs have stood in the way of me living a life true to myself.

As an adult, my life was consumed with being busy, which means I was distracted from the most important piece of my life….ME.

My life seemed fine enough, though, until it wasn’t.

Toward the end of my career working full-time as a teacher in a private school, my soul was crying for more.

More joy, more creativity, more calm and more freedom.

Less stress, anxiety and overwhelm please.

I was numbing and distracting myself with food, alcohol, socializing, being busy, trying to be perfect, trying to do it all, and so on. Along the way, I recognized I had to get out of teaching and feed my soul with the gift of writing and running my own online business (I’ve wanted to be a writer and entrepreneur since I was 16).

Easier said than done, right?

How do I give up a $100 000+ per year career?

Through reading, research, exploration and experimenting with blogging and writing, as well as other side-hustle ideas, I tried to find the magical answer that would make it ok leave my job. 

I saw the possibilities and learned a lot, but I stayed in the classroom because of the money. 

I continued in a career that was stressful and did not feed my soul. Don’t get me wrong; I enjoyed working with kids and being creative with my teaching, but there was too much of the other stuff that was soul-crushing and exhausting.   

I guess I needed a little push.

On Jan. 31, 2020, I got the news I had breast cancer.

I didn’t panic, nor did I think I was going to die, but whoa! What??

By the fall of 2020, I started listening to my body and my heart and knew I had to make a change. I reduced my teaching load to half-time to reduce my stress.

Stress feeds cancer and breeds all sorts of health issues.

At first, it was a huge relief to have a less hectic schedule, but as the year progressed, I knew I had to get out once and for all.

I needed to give myself permission to do what was right for me. Period.

Financially, it was not the ideal time, but I decided my health and my sanity was more important.

I retired from teaching in June of 2021.

From my busy career and being a mom and wife, I played multiple roles on a daily basis. Combined with being a perfectionist (which I didn’t realize at the time!) and juggling all of life’s must-do’s and to-do’s, I ignored the most important part of my life…ME.

It’s not that I ignored ME, as much as I put my deep needs and wants on the backburner (way back).

This means I didn’t see my desires as important as everything else.

I made myself a low priority.

Because of that, not only was my soul crying for more, I also lost touch with who I really was and found myself out of balance and unhappy.

Through the years, my weight went up and down. I tried many things to lose weight, but ultimately, when I ate a clean diet focused on mostly whole plant foods, the weight would come off. 

I became obsessed with health and nutrition, and I believed that what we put in our mouths was the main culprit. Sure, exercise and a healthy mindset helped too, but I always put food at the top of the list.

Food was also at the top of the list when I went off track from eating healthy too. I craved and went after all the fatty, salty stuff (fried, processed, cheesy, etc.) I could get.

Basically, I spent over a decade in a cycle: eating poorly and gaining weight, and then diving into a particular way of eating to shed the pounds.

This year, I made a commitment to lose 40 lbs between January 5 and July 1. In the beginning, as usual, it was easy; I lost 11 lbs but then slowly gained it back.

Do I feel like a failure?

Normally I would, but now that I’ve realized it’s my limiting beliefs and my thinking patterns and habits that are the real problem, I don’t feel like a failure.

I now believe I’ve been focusing on the wrong things.

Although I believe food is huge when it comes to being healthy (which includes being at a healthy weight), I now see food as the #2 influence on health, not #1.

What I think has more power than I ever realized.

At the writing of this page, I’m in the process of discovering my thinking patterns and habits and finding more effective ways to view myself and the world. Instead of focusing on the food (something outside of me), I’m learning to focus on my thoughts and spending time getting to know the real me.

What we think leads to the life we have right now.

And guess what? The life we have right now might not be aligned with who we really are or who we really want to be. If we’re out of alignment, all sorts of things can go wrong.

When our lives are aligned with who we really are, our hearts are aligned with our body and soul. We feel genuine and know who we are.

Like I said, I’m still trying to fully figure out who I really am, but I’m the closest I’ve ever been.

I believe we should be completely honest with ourselves by listening to our bodies and our hearts, recognizing when things aren’t working and being willing to do some inner work to change what’s out of sync.

My quote at the top of this page is so important, so I add it here again.

“An essential foundation for any woman’s positive sense of self and long-term happiness is listening closely to her own heart/soul and living a life true to HERself.” –Alison Carrey

My mission is to help myself and other women learn how to rediscover who they are, so they can live a life true to themselves. Ultimately, I want what many women want: to live confidently and comfortably in my own skin, and to be healthy and happy.

A Few Tidbits about Me

• In 2022 I turned 57.
• I live in Winnipeg, Manitoba in Canada (it gets tongue-sticking-to-the-metal-fence kind of cold here!)
• I’m the child of two divorces, and I know what it’s like to live in a dysfunctional family.
• I’m happily divorced and happily remarried.
• I’ve raised an independent daughter who listens to her soul and uses her own voice.
• I have two step-children and two grandchildren.
• I love cats and have three: Stella, Oliver and Milo.
• I love meaningful conversations, holding hands with my husband, and curling up with a good book or listening to a great book while on a walk, doing the dishes, etc.
• I’m a lifelong learner who loves learning maybe more than anything else.
• I’m a work in progress.

I’m honored you are here; thank you for taking the time to get to know me.

Your feedback and suggestions are welcome; please email me at info@alisoncarrey.com any time.

Live your true life,

Updated June 2, 2022