I began my life and career following the rules. 

Be a good girl (I pretended and fooled most—being fat and suicidal as a teen, using Jack Daniels  and chocolate chip cookie dough to self-medicate through it). 

Go to church (even though it was a minister who told me I was a sinner and that’s why my sister died). 

Get good grades. 

Be a hardworker.  

Value intelligence over emotion or intuition (embrace masculine values, because I’m too sensitive anyway). 

Ignore emotion, don’t be weak or vulnerable (or real). 

Be thin. 

Go straight to college, then grad school.  

Get married.   

Get a job. 

Get a house. 

Have kids. 

Get a better job. 

Then at 40 I hit a wall.  Why wasn’t I happy? 

My life was following some long-standing and never questioned path to, what? happiness, success, peace?  Why hadn’t I stopped and thought about what I wanted?  Especially after my world was rocked by a spiritual awakening and falling in love for the first time, like heart opening love, and it wasn’t in the regimented path I was on.  So, I began to question everything. 

Now I recognize that I had never really been myself.  I had what I call a spiritual awakening when I was 40 (some would call it a mid-life crisis). I suddenly understood that my life could be my own creation. I knew that I had the power. 

But it meant I had to face all of me.  All that had been ignored, denied, self-medicated, hidden, stuck, pretended, repressed, suppressed.  In short, I had to start from the inside out, and really face hard truths. Talk about a breakdown. 

Then came the breakthrough. Neuroscience and spirituality converged at the perfect time to show me exactly how to make the changes from settling with a mediocre (but very comfortable) life to creating my life on my own terms.  

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been insatiably curious about human potential and how people change. I wanted to know, what exactly is it that makes people genuinely happy, successful and creatively fulfilled? Why do some people struggle while others find a way to thrive, often despite the most challenging circumstances?  My whole life has been answering these questions. I’ve been a student of all things change and growth oriented, the neuroscience of transformation, and all things magical and mystical. I’m also inexplicably interested in a multitude of seemingly unconnected things: writing, psychology, entrepreneurship, creativity, quantum physics, epigenetics, spirituality, fitness, cellular biology, dancing…just to name a few. Finally, I realized that my unusual combination of interests and skills was a strength, not a liability. I’m a synthesizer and connector.  I can pull information together from many different fields to give a comprehensive recipe to help people reach their happiness. 

Now I’m building a transformational growth and purpose oriented company that addresses change from a perspective that says we all have a unique path that uses our whole being to become our best self.  And I promise, I teach this and coach this stuff because I live it. I am walking this walk too, and don’t want to pretend it’s always easy and shiny.  But it is always getting better!

My current life, outside of developing my legacy company for changing the world—Dr Robin Rise & Associates, I am a devoted mother of two beautiful (inside and out) daughters and good world citizens.  I love to constantly research and explore how to make life amazing, spend time outdoors, experience new things, explore new places, working out my body with all things fitness, yoga (getting better), dance (not well!), saving the planet and all living creatures on it and, just in general, soak up sunshine in a life I can truly love.