How I Went From Suicidal Alcoholic to Emmy-Winning Life Coach

For twenty years, my life was in chaos.

I was drowning in alcohol, three suicide attempts behind me, DUIs stacking up, and a week in jail that felt like forever. Rock bottom had a basement, and I found it.

Today? I'm an Emmy-winning Life Coach who has sat across from Oprah, written multiple best-selling books, and spent 30 years helping people remember who they really are beneath all that fear.

I've been the voice guiding transformation on over 600 episodes of reality TV, including NBC's Starting Over, Channel 5's Help Me, Rhonda, and VH1's Celebrity Fit Club. But here's what matters more than any of that.

You don't go from wanting to die to teaching people how to live without learning something profound about what's possible.

So, how did I crawl out of that darkness and into this life?

It all started on the worst day of my life…

i had the horrific experience of watching

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The Worst Day of My Life

The Day Everything Shattered

I was fourteen, bouncing on my mother's bed, watching her put on her favorite rose-colored lipstick. Father's Day brunch. A normal Sunday morning in our normal Midwestern life.

My father was shouting, "Come on, girls. Let's go." Because that's what fathers do. My two sisters were fighting it out in the bathroom and were not nearly ready.

I headed to the car first, eager and impatient the way kids are. My mother grabbed her coat. My father was already outside opening his trunk to grab his coat.

But out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that he didn’t grab a coat -- he grabbed a gun.

"You made me do this!" he hollered, pointing it at my mother.

The gun fired.

"What are you doing, Dad? Stop!" I screamed.

He cocked the gun again. This time, he pointed it at me.

I knew I was next.

My mother, already shot once, looked up and saw the gun in my face. With her very last breath, she screamed, "No! Don't!"

My father took the bullet meant for me and shot her a second time. The bullet went through her abdomen and out her back, landing in the car horn, causing it to blare for what seemed like forever.

Then he cocked the gun one more time, fell to his knees, put the barrel against his head, and fired.

Two minutes. I was the sole witness to my father killing my mother and committing suicide.

Everything I thought I knew about life, about safety, about love, shattered in that moment.

Twenty Years in the Wilderness

The guilt ate me alive. Why didn't I step in front of my mother? Why didn't I kick him in the shins? Why did I just stand there, frozen?

On the outside, I held it together. Inside? I was drowning.

I tried everything. Therapy, grief groups, every self-help book on the shelf, and workshops that promised healing. They helped a little, gave me tools, but I could never truly move on.

I blamed myself for not saving her. And with that, blame came a decision that would haunt me for decades: happiness was no longer an option.

College brought alcohol to numb the pain. Toxic relationship after toxic relationship, desperately trying to fill the void and finally feel loved.

I was a needy, emotional mess, and I knew it.

How I Reinvented Myself By Mastering My Fear

Until one day, when everything changed...

It was 1995. I was in school, training to be a minister at night, and doing PR for small businesses during the day. Just another Monday, sitting on the couch brainstorming with a client.

Then it happened.

Not an insight. A full-on awakening. Like someone had turned on every light in a house I'd been stumbling through in the dark for twenty years.

Somehow, I knew all the answers to all the questions I had ever asked.

I saw how my entire life - and even before that terrible day - had been run by fear.

Fear that I wasn't good enough. Fear that I was a failure. Fear that I would always be alone.

Fear had driven me to drink. Fear had led me to those suicide attempts. Fear had convinced me that no matter how much work I did on myself, I would never be good enough.

Fear was keeping me stuck.

But here's the miracle: once I saw how fear worked, I could somehow see how to break free from it.

Within weeks, I was finally able to let go of the past and start becoming the person I was born to be. Confident. Authentic. In love with myself for the first time in over two decades.

I felt like the real Rhonda Britten.

Along with this "download" from God, Spirit, the Universe-whatever you want to call it-came another message: "Now go teach this to others."

My first response? "Are you kidding me? No way."

But fear wasn't going to run my life anymore.

The Work That Changes Everything

What I discovered that day became what I now call the Wheel of Fear - the invisible force that keeps us stuck in cycles of self-sabotage and suffering. More importantly, I was given the antidote: the Wheel of Freedom that shows you exactly how to break free from fear to become the best version of yourself.

The work was so transformative... my coaching practice took off.

Olympians, CEOs, celebrities, bestselling authors, stay-at-home moms, bus drivers - they all found their way to me. I was featured on over 600 episodes of reality TV, helping people transform their lives in real time.

Over 30 years, I've coached thousands of people. Clients happily paid thousands of dollars a year to work with me because the results were undeniable.

As much as I loved coaching, I had this nagging feeling that it wasn’t enough.

Until people master fear, they'll continue to face the same struggles over and over again.

Nobody Becomes Fearless Alone

If you've done a million personal development workshops or hired a spiritual coach, yet still aren't where you want to be in life? It's because fear is still keeping you stuck.

And I learned from my journey that nobody becomes fearless alone.

If I was going to help people master fear, I needed to go beyond books, shows, and one-on-one coaching.

I created the Fearless Living Transformation Program to provide you with the steps and support needed to master fear and become the most confident, authentic, fearless version of yourself.

My students transformed so completely that they wanted to help others master their fears, too. They wanted to become coaches and do what I do.

So I created the Life Coach Certification Program. Soon, it became known as the Ivy League of Life Coach training. We have over 500 Certified Life Coaches changing lives from England to Australia to Egypt to the USA.

Everything I do—and my coaches—is in service of one thing: to help you live the life your soul intended.