Hi, I’m Natalie!
I grew up in Davis, California. My upbringing was a bit unconventional, as I was homeschooled until the 9th grade with the Unschooling modality. Unschooling involves child-directed learning, rather than a concrete educational curriculum. This led me to spend a lot of my childhood outdoors, digging in the dirt and collecting bugs, or just running around barefoot. I’m the middle child in my family, with a younger brother and older sister. My sister is twelve years older than me and was not homeschooled, but my brother and I are only three years apart so we were both homeschooled. We were very close growing up (still are!).
I feel that my upbringing gave me a unique perspective and it has played a huge role in shaping who I am today, and I value my parents’ decision to homeschool me. With that said, homeschooling ultimately did not jive with me on a personal or spiritual level. I am a very social and outgoing person. I really love to connect and talk with others, and I like to structure my life so I have plenty of opportunities to be around people. I also LOVE (yes, caps) school and learning. It is a real passion of mine, because it brought such a richness to my life when I started school in 9th grade. I felt elated that I had found something to give me serious drive and purpose.
Although high school was as rocky it can be as a socially awkward ex-homeschooler, I did really well in my classes and I was a total nerd (still am!). Graduating high school was a big triumph for me, considering how I felt when I began (intimidated, out-of-place, painfully aware that my peers knew things I did not). I graduated in 2013 with a lot of momentum, and started taking classes that Summer at the SCC Davis Center.
During the Fall in my first full semester at SCC, I became involved in an abusive relationship that would ultimately leave me feeling like the rug had been ripped right out from underneath me. I started failing my classes and dropped out during my 3rd semester. After around two years with a lot of ups and downs, I found myself again through an intensive outpatient therapy program that utilizes the Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) modality. DBT is designed around four key areas — mindfulness, emotional regulation, distress tolerance, and communication (“interpersonal effectiveness”). The goal of DBT is to increase one’s skills in these areas by learning a variety of tools to cope with the issues that come up in one’s life as part of being a human being. In DBT therapy, one can build their own individualized toolbox for their unique brand of crazy (Joke, sort of :)).
After completing the DBT program I began taking classes again in 2017, finding myself on a new path towards Psychology and Gender Studies. I am now in my last semester at SCC, and I will be transferring to UC Davis this Fall. I’m still really passionate about learning—this was reignited for me along my path to healing. I still feel strongly that I am simply continuing along my journey to understanding myself and uprooting old systems of belief and behavior, but this is has simply become another passion of mine. Self-betterment is of huge importance to me, and I think that there is not enough emphasis in our culture placed upon self-development or self-reflection—significant weight is placed on external achievements like degrees and career, but what of the inner self?
I feel that to become a well-rounded, happy healthy human is one of the most difficult challenges in life. Spiritual bypassing in favor of external achievements is so, so tempting, but it leads only to chasing peace and happiness. Thus, the majority of my time is spent figuring out how to get closer to being my own best version of myself and figuring out what exactly that even looks like.
philm 