We recently connected with Natalie Randall and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Natalie, really happy you were able to join us today and we’re looking forward to sharing your story and insights with our readers. Let’s start with the heart of it all – purpose. How did you find your purpose?
You will often hear quotes that say something along the lines of, “There’s purpose in the pain.” That type of saying really bothered me initially until I learned to embrace that there may be some truth behind that. Just like any of us, I can recall being a little girl with big dreams. I knew I wanted to help and heal, but I thought that meant that I would be a veterinarian. Turns out, the help and heal part actually applied to people for me.
Purpose is one of my favorite subjects to talk about and work on with my clients. For me, it took a while to discover my purpose. There were a lot of moments of prayer and self-reflection and dabbling in the wrong career fields. Aptitude testing was a game changer for me and then I learned about one other secret ingredient, values based decision making.
I dug deep to really hone in on my top three values. Then, I examined every area of my life where those top three values were not front and center, or weren’t able to be. The career I was working in at the time, had taken away from these values, not fed them.
I realized that I needed to make drastic changes to my life and shift my career to where my heart had always been pointing. As a side note, your career doesn’t always have to be your purpose, but for me personally it had to be. Finding purpose isn’t a straight line on the chronology of your life, it often has many ups and downs.
I have walked a long road with some pretty big pain points and challenges. As people naturally opened up to me, I realized that I love sitting with others in their pain and grief. I really enjoy holding space for them to process and heal. Now, I have the beautiful privilege and honor to hold space for others so they can experience healing and help through their own struggles.
Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?
I have walked a long road with some pretty big pain points and challenges. I really enjoy holding space for people to process and heal as they walk their own road of struggles and challenges. My current business is focused on integrative heart healing and trauma resolution with plans for expansion to walk alongside adolescents.
As a former high school teacher, I really miss working with teens. It feels like every day more and more teens need help. I have been developing a teen coaching program that will also include the integrative heart healing and trauma resolution practices in addition to identity work, mindset shifts, communication skills, values based decision making and a deep dive into the science behind emotions and emotional regulation. My goal is to have this program rolled out by mid-April.
While growth is my current focus on the business, I am also learning clinical herbalism. I have big dreams for the future and am excited to watch all of the pieces come together. In the interim, I have started making my own medicinal bath salts, skin care products and other health items. The end goal is big, and I am inspired daily by everyone I know that passionately pursues their dreams.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
Great question. Personally, resilience has been one of my best qualities. It does come with a caveat though. Resilience has a very strong tie to my tenacity.
Resilience plus tenacity has allowed me to face and overcome many challenges. Because I was able to face these challenges and refused to settle for less than what I felt was best, I learned that healing is possible. I learned that the pain and trauma in your life can be a very small blip in the radar, a fact, rather than something devastating and consuming.
Empathy is a critical quality and skill in my line of work. Being able to see my client’s perspective, step into that moment of pain or grief with them allows me to better understand them, to come from a place of love and compassion. When I can truly lean into what they are processing and working through, I become better equipped to walk them through it.
The best advice that I can give is that we have to allow room for healing in our lives. The healing process alone will incorporate resilience, tenacity and empathy. As you determine to settle for nothing less than a specific image of what healing looks like for you, you will naturally develop these skills.
Who is your ideal client or what sort of characteristics would make someone an ideal client for you?
My purpose is best summarized by saying that I work in the area of relational trauma. I specialize in family restoration and relational trauma with an emphasis on identity work.
My passion is to help families and teens break free from the pain and suffering caused by generational issues and trauma, without spending years in counseling or inner healing work, so that they can thrive and live an empowered life.
My ideal client is anyone that has experienced challenging circumstances in life and desires to feel whole and healed. This can include victims of sexual crime and domestic violence, individuals fighting PTSD, depression or facing grief. I also work with many individuals that have family “secrets” which really just translates to generational patterns and cycles.
The scope of the work that I do is very broad. Almost all of us have layers of issues that need healing. Very rarely do I work with someone that has only ever experienced one specific issue, depression, for example. They often have many life experiences that contributed to the depression. The goal is to allow healing into all areas so that they can be whole. It’s like peeling off the layers of an onion one by one. As you peel off one layer, another layer is exposed, until you work your way down to the core (root) issue that actually caused the depression in the first place.
