From Survival
To Authority
Survival can teach you resilience. This training teaches you how to turn it into authority.
From The Ashes, A Life Built By Hand
Before I could teach leadership, I had to claim my own.
Most people know me today as a wellness counselor, ceremonial facilitator, and someone who moves through the world with untamed independence. What they don’t see are the ashes beneath that foundation—the decades spent dismantling trauma, fighting invisible illness, and rebuilding a life by hand when every system failed me.
This is the path that forged the work I do today.
The Origin Story
I was born into an abusive family system and raised by a combination of sociopathic and sadistic narcissists. My childhood was marked by daily torture, rage, manipulation, and psychological warfare.
By the time I escaped that environment, I had lost trust in myself and struggled to understand who I was.
Once I entered adulthood, it became clear that my inner compass had been damaged. I struggled with boundaries, self-trust, and healthy relationships, adopting survival strategies like people-pleasing, hyper-vigilance, and self-erasure just to stay safe.
I fought for my independence with everything I had and made myself into a woman who could emerge from chaos with a fiercely protective, resourceful state of mind. I am entirely self-made. I poured myself into serving others, earning a sheriff’s commendation for helping a stranded stranger, and even slept three months in a horse stall just to keep a rejected foal alive. I turned my sensitivity into caring for everyone else, often leaving myself last.
Just when I thought I had built a stable life, everything was stripped away.
The Crucible
Bitten by an infected tick, I contracted neurological Lyme disease that went misdiagnosed for ten agonizing years. I ended up bedridden for three, confined to a wheelchair, and trapped in a toxic marriage within a moldy home.
The disease reached my brain, and for a time I forgot the names of the people I loved most. My mind could no longer process depth perception, or remember how to walk down stairs. Words came out backwards, and simple math became impossible. At stoplights, it was difficult to decipher what red or green meant—watching the cars around me was the only way to know when to stop. That was the day I handed over my keys, and with them, my grip on the life I cherished. The brain damage left me relearning the most basic parts of being alive.
Stripped of my strength, my health, and my freedom, I had to learn how to crawl out of the wreckage and rebuild my mind, body, and soul from scratch.
Inch by agonizing inch, my body began to heal. To answer the deepest questions of my soul, I sought out Indigenous elders. I spent ten years in monthly ceremonies, healing generational trauma, and eventually received the raven totem that now marks my work.
That crucible—and the journey of healing that began long before it—became the true foundation for Develop Your Authority©.
My Journey Forward
Lying in that hospital bed, I began to understand that my body had been keeping score all along. Decades of abuse had lived inside my nervous system, wearing down my immune system and leaving me vulnerable long before the disease took hold.
Healing my body became a quest of the soul.
It forced me to look at my own patterns and the ways I was perpetuating self-sabotage and blocking my own healing. For years I had searched outside myself, trying to understand why the abusers in my life chose cruelty, until a more honest question rose in its place: Who am I, apart from what was done to me? My childhood conditioning had left parts of me underdeveloped, and building a different future as an adult was my responsibility. So I ended my unhealthy marriage, healed my heart, and kept it open for healthier relationships.
What broke the cycle was when I discovered a psychological method called UnTherapy®.
The Promise of UnTherapy®
Everything changed when I discovered a psychological method called UnTherapy®, founded by Dr. Sunny Massad.
Through her unique counseling approach, a single session taught me how to release the definitions of my trauma.
For the first time, I saw myself separate from my abuse—as someone capable of growth, healing, and hope.
UnTherapy® gave me a language for my pain, practical tools for change, and a framework for rebuilding self-trust. More importantly, it taught me how to move beyond perpetual recovery and start creating a future uncontrolled by history or conditioning.
What began as a lifeline became a calling that completely transformed the direction of my life and work.
From Student To Teacher
UnTherapy® changed my life, so I dedicated myself to mastering it.
Graduated from Dr. Sunny Massad's Wellness Counseling program at The Hawaii Wellness Institute, and opened a private practice.
Certified as a Master UnTherapy® Practitioner, personally mentored by Dr. Massad.
Joined the faculty of the Women's Leadership Institute in Honolulu, Hawaii.
Dr. Massad retired and named me her successor, entrusting me with the rights, honors, and intellectual property of UnTherapy®.
Develop Your Authority© is the modernization of that legacy—a self-leadership framework for today’s challenges and opportunities.
View Jessica’s Training & Credentials +
Completed 44 hours of advanced training in the Narcissistic Abuse Treatment Clinician (NATC) curriculum in the fields of Antagonism-Informed Care, Trauma Bonding, and Narcissistic Abuse Recovery.
Completed a 64-hour post graduate teacher training of the UnTherapy® Program and Internship with all the rights and privileges of a proficient mentor and teacher in the fields of UnTherapy®, Positive Psychology, and Reality Therapy.
Ten years of monthly ceremony with elders (2014–2024), trained to carry a ceremony for grief and loss and Grandfather Fire. Certified in 2026 to facilitate fire walks, arrow breaks, and rites of passage through the Fire Walk & Ritual Arts Facilitator Training at Ancient Pathways.
Intensive study of life management, personal development consulting, and professional peer mentoring. 64-hour certification program.
Successfully completed the 64-hour intensive study on the integrative approaches of positive psychology, mindfulness, and solution-based problem solving earning all the rights and privileges of a professional mentor.
Certified as a Wellness Counselor completing the 64-hour intensive studies with all the rights and privileges of a proficient mentor specializing in the holistic approaches of life management, personal development, consulting, and wellness counseling.
Jessie's work is no fluff, no nonsense — just a massive let go of all that no longer serves — and a rewrite of an old script in desperate need of a more positive direction.
The Symbolism Behind The Message
Every detail of the Develop Your Authority© raven was chosen with intention.
The ability to see clearly, recognize what is true, and know your own inner world.
It sheds its old skin to make room for who you are becoming, holding everything you had to release before you could rise.
The mountains you climbed to get here, every hardship now part of the strength of your flight.
A reminder that you never climbed alone.
Created in deep reverence for Indigenous cultures around the world. The emblem joins the raven of the Native American peoples of the land with the cowrie of the Polynesian peoples of the ocean, carried together by the waters that bind us, shore to shore.
Navigate The Sacred Silence Of Transformation
The emptying is the initiation. The silence is the forge. The isolation is the path to integrated wholeness. This training provides you the architecture to move through transformation and emerge with authority.
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