Gayle shifts audiences of transformational coaches, healers and visionary leaders out of outdated patterns and into new possibilities. She weaves the topics of visibility, leadership and spirituality with storytelling, energy work and experiential learning to guide audiences into their truest expression so they can honor their soul mission.
Even though she's always been a natural communicator, Gayle admits that as a child she learned to make herself invisible in order to feel safe. Her journey to heal those wounds has led her to creating direct, yet tender spaces for audiences and clients committed to being seen, heard and felt for the work that wants to come through them.
Gayle is the creator of Sage SensationTM Retreats and founder of the award-winning marketing agency The Story Stylist. Hints of her ability to touch audiences emerged in childhood when her 4H and church youth group leaders consistently tapped her to lead performances, deliver testimony and speak from the heart.
Those early experiences transferred easily into her career. As a former journalist, marketing communications specialist and PR executive, she has been writing professionally since 1996. She's also been speaking, moderating, training and facilitating throughout her career and business since 2000. Her appearances include engagements with numerous business events, retreats and networking groups such as the Center for Women and Enterprise Leadership Conference, The Enterprise Center at Salem State University Workshop Series, Talk + Profit LIVE, Energized Living's Soulpreneur Retreat and The Wellness Universe. She recently served as speaker panel moderator at the SourcedTM Transformation Trends Conference.
Additionally, Gayle has appeared in dozens of newspaper, broadcast news sites and podcasts across the country, including features in the Beverly Citizen, Boston Herald and Boston Voyager. She also created and hosted the online radio show Positive News Now and has contributed to TED-Ed, Small Business Trendsetters and Business Innovators Magazine. Her writing has been published in the Taunton Daily Gazette, Daily Hampshire Gazette, Ludlow Register, Palmer Journal-Register, Metrowest Daily News, Ashland and Holliston TABs, Founderswire and The Wellness Universe Blog.
Entrepreneurship, marketing, words, mysticism, stories about underdogs and disruptors, animals, New Earth ascension, spirituality, personal growth and development, curiosity about life, the universe and the human experience, nature, outdoor activities
More than 100 miles
I generally get paid for speaking but make exceptions
I had the opportunity to work with an equine coach and her horse named Saint. Some of the intentions I had for the session focused on leadership and trust. At one point in our session, the coach asked me to lead Saint around the corral simply by walking in front of him.
As I walk in front of Saint, I can tell he’s really close behind me, which makes me uncomfortable because I can’t see what’s happening with this large animal. I feel intimidated. I don’t know what he’s going to do and I keep looking back to see where he is in relation to me. Each time I look back, he stops even though I keep walking. So then I stop, turn forward, start walking and he follows.
Can I trust Saint not to throw or trample me?
After a few rounds of this, my coach stops us and explains to me that Saint wants to follow and keep the connection with me, but whenever I look over my shoulder to see where he is, the connection breaks. My fear and distrust are interfering with leading Saint effectively. He's following my lead, yet the stop-start dynamic is not the desired result for the exercise.
Not only did I grew up in an environment that I didn't trust, I also had childhood experiences of nearly being thrown off a horse and trampled by a cow, and this exercise was bringing all of that to the surface for me.
Eventually, my coach informs me that when a horse walks behind you that closely, it’s like they are saying I’ve got your back.
And then it clicks for me. If getting trampled is no longer a concern here, how would I show up?
With this new awareness, Saint and I do the exercise again, except this time I relax and walk forward confidently, trusting myself to do my part and trusting that he will do his.
In both instances, Saint mirrored my energy, reflecting my self-doubt the first time and my self-trust the second time.
Many of us have experienced broken trust, and it makes sense that we link trust challenges as being caused by something outside of us. Yet what I learned from my equine experience with Saint is that we are able to trust others to the extent that we are able to trust ourselves.
When I was 9 years old, I made a promise to be silent.
I grew up in a toxic, dysfunctional and abusive family and when I became the target of abuse, I kept it a secret because I was terrified that if I spoke up all hell would break loose and I’d lose my family.
After five terrifying years, I broke my silence.
When I finally told my family what was going on, everything I feared would happen, didn’t. My abuser denied everything, my family didn’t believe me and they swept it all under the rug as if nothing had happened at all.
Even though I broke the silence, I was shocked that no one really heard me and all I could do to endure the situation was to make myself invisible.
That worked for me on some levels. The abuse ended but the trauma from it all was very much alive.
This survival pattern of hiding out to stay safe really started to hinder me after starting my business in 2013 when I had to become way more visible then I was used to. At that time, I was also helping my clients find, create and share their signature stories for greater connection and visibility even though I wasn’t sharing the whole truth behind why I cared so much about supporting them with their stories.
At that time, I didn’t have a guide or a space to recognize that trauma was informing the creation and evolution of my business and I didn't know how to navigate that responsibly for myself and others.
Fumbling through that experience was my own crash course in breaking through visibility blocks. At first I relied on my coping mechanisms. I’m a recovering overachiever, and one of my go-to coping mechanisms is working really hard to make things happen.
I looked visible despite my visibility wounds. I was DOING ALL THE THINGS yet this was the first time I set goals, worked hard to achieve them and didn’t experience success. Instead, all I could see was
· Maxed out credit cards
· Dwindling back balances
· Monthly revenue rollercoaster
- Mixed results with clients
- Shrinking confidence
Carl Jung says, Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.
My childhood wounds were playing out in my business and what I was learning from this experience with my business is that you can’t think, do or spend your way out of that.
You have to go within. You have to sit with your discomfort. You have to DARE to listen to your heart.
My heart kept whispering to me, Tell your story but my mind kept screaming NO! Not THAT story.
The thought of exposing this part of myself and letting go of my need to control what people think about me literally made me sick to my stomach, yet I couldn’t ignore this inner knowing that I needed to do this, even if I wasn’t 100 percent sure why.
I’ll never forget the first time I shared publicly about my abuse. I grappled with all the same fears that had kept me silent and invisible in the past.
What if I offend someone?
What if this is too disturbing?
I don’t want people to think I’m looking for sympathy.
I don’t want people to feel bad for me.
I don’t want to be a bother.
Somehow I managed to stay just curious enough to share that story with my community in an email campaign for one of my offerings.
Here’s what happened . . .
The month before I launched that campaign, I made under $100. Within three weeks of sharing my story, I signed on three new clients and made more than $7800, which was the most and fastest money I’d ever made in my business at that time.
My business changed, my personal and professional relationships changed and for the first time I actually felt powerful, magnetic and ALIVE.
To this day, I honor the past version of me by continuing to show up, speak up and make my work matter.
Amy Oscar says “Shadow is a symptom of hidden pain, defended hurt and blocked light.”
I worked hard for decades to keep myself safe, but that also made me invisible.
It wasn’t until I dared to listen to my heart that I could see how my childhood wounds were playing out in my business and my life. Today I take a powerful stand for my clients so they can make their magic visible and expand their impact. Supporting my clients at that level would have been terrifying for me if I resisted my own transformation and chose to stay safe and invisible.
We all have past experiences that create patterns we bring into new situations even though we no longer need them. When that happens, it’s totally possible to transform them into new energy and fresh results from your healed heart.
New Earth leaders are birthing new systems and ways of being that are intended to uplift humanity and transform the world for the greater good from this point on. Individually and collectively, humans are releasing old beliefs and leadership values in order to rise as Divine creators and soul-aligned leaders birthing this new era.
* Learn about the concept of New Earth and your role in creating it
* Discover the key New Earth values already shifting businesses, shaping society and transforming systems during this evolutionary time
* Access a new possibility to lead in your own, divinely assigned way
Have you noticed lately that the way you've always done marketing is no longer working for you? You're doing “all the things” and showing up in all the places, yet you're still feeling overworked and underpaid. When entrepreneurs and leaders want to make changes in business and life, we often attempt to do so from the energy that has helped us create our current results. Everything we observe and experience comes through the filter of our own energy field. When you know how to change your energy first, you will know how to consistently change your circumstances and create aligned results.
* Learn a unique method to create energetic upgrades that turn visibility blocks into your most authentic expression.
* Reveal the hidden truth(s) of what keeps you from achieving your desired results
* Identify old patterns you are ready to release and new energy you are ready to receive
Visibility blocks can hide out in your energy field, interfering with your results despite your inspired vision, clear goal and succinct marketing strategy. Healing your heart is the key to shifting out of frustration and procrastination and into focus, inspiration and motivation.
* Discover why healing your heart sets you up for success
* Actively feel emotions in a safe, loving and non-judgmental setting designed to move stuck energy keeping you from being seen, heard and felt from a place of connection
* Feel empowered to be yourself, speak what's true for you and receive whatever comes