The Beginning

I knew when I was eighteen years old that I wanted to open a gym one day, because I loved fitness. My late boyfriend, Jorge, was a major influence.

When I was eighteen, my boyfriend at that time played baseball with my father and brother. Watching them play was where I saw Jorge for the first time. Jorge's looks and athletic ability took my breath away. He had a wife and son that came to the games, and although I had a boyfriend, I enjoyed watching Jorge play. I found out that he owned and operated a gym, which I thought was so cool. I had been with my boyfriend since I was fifteen. We had a great relationship that continued until I was twenty-three and went away to college, then we drifted apart.

I transferred from three different colleges until I ended up back in Florida, my home state, and graduated from the University of Miami with a degree in psychology and a minor in exercise physiology. During my time at the University of Florida, my major was exercise science, where I studied the human body. Although I enjoyed this very much, I also found psychology very intriguing because I loved to study the human mind. I have the gift of listening to and advising people to help them heal, so I decided to switch my major because I wanted to learn more about the mind-body connection. Knowing that at a very young age I wanted to open a wellness center one day, my dad gave me an assignment: to learn and get as much experience as I could before he would help me open my very own center.

My father, who was a very successful businessman, knew exactly what it took to open my own business. He told me I needed to start from the bottom and learn every aspect and detail possible before I would be ready to open my own center. He gave me a timeline of ten years to learn what I needed to before he would financially help me. I knew he was right because he had done it himself.

When I was twenty-two, I graduated from college and decided to work for my dad's business and teach fitness on the side. However, my dad and I did not see eye to eye when it came to his business. My heart was not into auto parts; it was into health and wellness. I also did not want to be under my dad's wing and needed to branch out on my own where my passion lay. This was when I took the leap and went into fitness full time.

I drove down to South Beach one day to try to locate an old friend who had opened a gym. I had no idea what the name was, but when I stopped to get a protein shake, I saw a guy with a T-shirt from a local gym. It happened to be my friend's. This is how every aspect of my life played out. I would send out a request, and the universe would respond, just like that.

I was so happy to have found the gym. My friend gave me a job, and that started my new path in the fitness business. I later ended up leasing his gym for a year to learn more and be ready to open my own in the future.

I lived in South Beach for seven years. During this time, I ran into Jorge everywhere. I bumped into him in restaurants, movie theaters, and even elevators, until one night, we met at a dance club. The stars were aligned because he had just gotten divorced and I had broken up with my boyfriend. We started dating and had an on-again, off-again relationship for about three years. It was not a healthy relationship. It was more like an addiction, a certain connection that is indescribable. We did have great communication and great times when we were together though. We shared our dreams, goals, and desires and could talk for hours. We laughed a lot and had so much fun together. It was just that we would break up every three months or so, which was pure heartache.

Jorge taught me about spiritual signs and connections. He had lost his mother to breast cancer when he was twenty-eight years old. He taught me about the number 11:11, which he felt was a sign from her. Also, he would find pennies everywhere and tell me it was her way of connecting with him. I loved hearing this because I have always been a big believer in life after death and that our loved ones are always with us even after they pass on.

My great grandmother was clairvoyant. She would see things happen before they actually did. My mother is also very much in touch with her spiritual side. She has had visits from her father after he passed. One night, when she was going through a very difficult time, she woke up and saw her father sitting at the side of her bed. He told her that everything would be okay. She knew this was a visit because she was wide-awake.

I experienced the same thing one night while on a ski trip with Jorge and my family. Jorge's mother appeared to me in a dream and told me how happy she was that I was in his life. We talked for a while, and I remembered it as if it had really happened. I had never met her, but I described to Jorge what she looked like in detail. He was so happy. I had never seen a picture of her before the dream, and it was definitely her. Even more amazing about this experience was that I dreamed of her on January 5, the night I was due to be born. My mom told me that they had induced me because of complications, which was why I was born in December. Jorge was so shocked and told me that January 5 was the anniversary of his mother's death. The day I was supposed to be born, the day she died, and the night I had the dream all were January 5. I knew this was a definite connection, but I had no idea how strong the connections would become in the near future.

Jorge died suddenly in 1999. I was twenty-eight years old, the age he was when his mother had died. He died at thirty-four years old from an inexplicable reason for which we will never have answers. The day he died, I was doing a breast cancer walk with my very close friend. I remember saying a minute before the race began that I should get a sign, write the name of Jorge's mom on my chest, and dedicate the walk to her. At that exact moment, the loudest gunshot went off, signaling that the race had begun. Startled, we began to walk. Little did I know that Jorge had just died from a gunshot wound to his chest. It was as if his mom were sending me a signal.

Immediately after the race, I found out about Jorge, and my life turned upside down.

The healing process was extremely difficult, because there was no explanation as to what had happened, just many theories and hearsay. I was in shock and pain and filled with questions.

During this time, I was in the middle of my lease with the gym in South Beach and still perfecting my trade. I was reaching the ten-year timeline my dad had given me and was nearly ready to open my own wellness center. One day while at the gym, a member gave me a CD called Metamorphosis. He told me to listen to it, try to relax, and it would help heal my heartbreak.

This CD was the only thing that brought temporary peace to my mind and soul. The more I meditated, the more I felt I was transforming from caterpillar to butterfly. Metamorphosis was slowly occurring in me as my mind, body, and spirit transformed.

I finished the one-year lease with the gym and began looking for my own location. As I was teaching a spin class one day at a local gym, I stumbled upon a notice about a location the owner was going to purchase but was backing out of. I jumped in my car and found the new site was zoned for a gym. It was much larger than I wanted, but I could see my dream of my very own wellness center in that exact location. The community required a spa and health club, and it was very strict with the size and specs. It was the total package. My father was very concerned about the size of the building and the amount of work and responsibility I was setting myself up for. I agreed with him, but he knew that when my mind was set on something, I fought till the end. I had a calling that was too strong to ignore.

After one year of negotiating with the landlord, we finalized the deal.

During that year, the meditation CD really helped me heal from Jorge's death, but it was a long and difficult process. I believed that if it could help me, it could also help many others, so I decided to use it in my new wellness center. I named the wellness center Metamorphecise, which means, "The transformation begins within."

Two very close friends helped me design the logo. It came to life one night when the three of us, after drinking some wine, started doing yoga poses and acting silly. We had so much fun and the logo was designed while my friend and I did the pose and my other friend drew it on her computer. I had the name, logo, and location all set. Now the concept was ready to launch as a wellness center to transform people's lives through exercise and healthy thinking and living.

Follow the Signs

After negotiating for one year, my father, my landlord, and I finally came to an agreement and the papers were signed. The day we signed the contract was January 5, 2001. I had nothing to do with the date; it was all about organizing a time between two very busy men to get together and help me put this deal into place. When I realized that the day was January 5, I knew without a shadow of doubt that Jorge and his mother were telling me that this was meant to be. Remember this was the day I was supposed to be born, the day Jorge's mother died, and the day I had the dream of her—not a coincidence at all.

The address of the building was another powerful sign from Jorge: 111 Grand Palms Drive. Wow! This was the number that Jorge and I talked about all the time: 1:11 and 11:11. I also used to tell Jorge that, whether we were together or apart, one day he would walk into my gym and tell me how proud he was of me for accomplishing my goals and reaching my dreams. We also talked about butterflies a lot and how he would come to me as a purple butterfly because that was my favorite color. He used to talk as if he knew he was going to die young, but I would tell him to stop because it made me sad.

For a couple of months, I did a presale of memberships and started to design the layout of the building. It was a large building—17,000 square feet to be exact. I was told by my landlord, to design a spa, salon, and health club. I had never designed anything but wanted to do it myself, without hiring an expert to do it for me. I did have people advise me, but in the end, I design everything myself. It was as if a force greater than me was guiding me every step of the way. Every detail—plants, paintings, murals, waterfalls, décor—came together perfectly. I had become a spa, salon, gym, and design expert, all within a couple of months.

One afternoon, while I was meeting with the general contractor about the build-out, an extraordinary thing happened. The extremely heavy door flew open very loudly and a lavender butterfly came floating in. I was overcome with emotion. I knew it was Jorge, because this is how he did everything—larger than life. Instead of crying or being scared, I just smiled and felt peace in my heart and soul.

During the presale and setup of the business, I began dating a very close friend who had helped me get through the loss of Jorge. I met Matt six months after Jorge died, and he helped me through a very difficult time in my life. He was patient and understanding of what I was going through and never pressured me to move on right away. He had been a marine and firefighter, and a very active bodybuilder, so it was a perfect match. We had a lot in common and had fun together. I asked him if he wanted to work with me, and since his lawn business was boring him and he enjoyed fitness, he agreed. He put 100 percent effort into helping me with the entire start-up of the business. His strengths were my weaknesses, and vice versa. I enjoyed that I could be myself with him, and we both loved being with one another. As time went on, we grew closer and fell in love. We married two years later.

Metamorphecise was up and running a year before we got married, and people loved it. Members loved the fact that they could exercise and pamper themselves all in one place. We also had seminars for healing, meditation and hypnotherapy classes, astrology readings, wine and cheese parties, and a full-service juice bar. It was a place to transform your being and escape the mundane of your everyday life.

Over the next five years, we built a wonderful family within the business, both employees and members. We helped so many people go through many difficult moments in their lives: deaths of loved ones, cancers, divorce, etc. I was overcome with joy that we could help so many people to transform their mind, body, and spirit.

Matt and I also started our own family. We had a daughter first and then a son. We were very happy, but we also worked very hard—about sixty hours a week—so we raised our kids within our business. We built a daycare with cribs within the center and hired a nanny to help us with the kids. The first three or four years it was fun and easy, but as they got older, we had to make adjustments to make sure the kids were getting enough time with us as well. When you are running a business of this magnitude and balancing a family, it is not an easy task. This put a bit of a strain on our marriage as well.

Things were going pretty well until the economy took a turn in late 2008. This became a very stressful time for Matt and me. Our business was very much affected, our marriage was becoming very difficult, and my health was taking a beating.

I had been feeling very weak and off balance for about eight years, and it seemed to be getting worse. I also started to get long spurts of severe vertigo, where everything would be spinning and I felt like I had a brain tumor. Vertigo is very scary if you have ever experienced it, especially when it would not go away for months at a time. I remember training clients many times and feeling like the floor was falling down beneath my feet, kind of like a ride where the ground falls down. I had been seeing so many flashes of light in my vision for so many years, I just assumed that it was Jorge or little angels appearing to me. It looked like what you see after someone takes a picture with a flash. I went to many specialists and doctors trying to figure out why I had these symptoms, or why the vertigo would not go away, but no one could give me answers. The doctors would say it was stress from my life or symptoms from my pregnancy hormones. About two to three times a month, I also experienced migraines so severe that they would cause me to vomit for hours each time.

I remember one time I was in a meeting with a gentleman about a martial arts school. As he was talking, I started to see those flashes of light, and they went from about five to five hundred to five thousand. There were so many flashes that his entire face became distorted, and so did the entire room. I later learned that when this happened, I would have to immediately get to a dark room and put ice on my head or I would get a severe migraine and vomiting. Sometimes, it would go away and other times I would suffer for four to six hours and nothing helped.

I managed to live with all these symptoms until one day it got worse. That day, I was getting ready to teach my spin class. Suddenly, I had that feeling of the ground dropping and a loss of balance, and then I could not see out of my right eye at all for about five minutes. I held on to the wall without anyone noticing and waited until I was back to normal. I called Matt to come upstairs and quietly told him to check on me throughout the class in case I passed out and call 911 if needed. I think by this point, he was so used to all my symptoms that he thought I was a little cuckoo. Needless to say, I made it through the class and felt fine afterward. That night I called my mom and told her about it and she was so upset with me for teaching and told me I must see a heart doctor. She had been watching Dr. Oz the day before and he was talking about all the symptoms that I was sharing being a heart condition.