Meet our featured beauty with brains Katie Mincy, a massage therapist and wellness coach based in Florida, USA. She is a truly inspirational woman who has overcome sexual abuse and drug addiction, to reach where she is today. Here is her story.
“I am Katie Mincy. I’m 24 and live in Florida, USA. I’m currently a student attending University in pursuit of a Nursing Career. I am also a Licensed Massage Therapist and Health and Wellness Coach. But before attaining these titles, I had a very rough life.
I was abused by a neighbour when I was 7. I went to therapy for it once and never went back again. I moved on and it was never spoken about again. No one but my parents and brother knew what happened. So I buried it deep down and made gymnastics and dance my life.
In sixth grade was when my life started to really change. Middle school, or Junior High, is never an easy time for most kids. I truly struggled with depression and anxiety because of the area and social status of the kids I grew up around. I grew up in a town where, if your parents didn’t make a certain amount of money to be able to buy you the “best” clothes or the “newest” cell phone or technology, you got made fun of. If you didn’t play a sport for the school team, you were made fun of. If you weren’t stick thin and wore size 00 from Abercrombie or Holister, you were made fun of. After a while, I figured out that no matter what I did to fit in, because I had already been made fun of for one thing, I wasn’t going to be accepted. Rumours were spread about me that I was a lesbian and that I tried to convince girls on the dance team to sleep with me.
When High school came around, I had my first boyfriend and those rumors had started to die down. But other rumors had begun. Now that I had a boyfriend, people assumed that I had lost my virginity. However, that couldn’t be more untrue. In fact, it’s so untrue that the same boyfriend broke up with me because another girl slept with him instead.
After that, next summer, my best guy friend decided he wanted to have a girlfriend instead of spending time with me. Luckily, I met my current best guy friend that semester of school. Taylor has been nothing but amazing the past 9 years. I couldn’t have been blessed with a better person in my life.
But that didn’t stop the bullying from worsening and it didn’t stop the pain. I thought many times about suicide, to the extent of formulating plans and coming up with notes to who I’d tell my reasons of leaving the earth to. Luckily, my parents listened to my cries for help when I yelled out for it. We moved to Florida the summer after my 11th year.
Moving to Florida was both good and slightly harmful. It was good because I got out of the toxic environment of being bullied all of the time. I was able to complete high school on a good note and made new friends along the way. It was harmful because once I was out of high school, I started to rebel a little bit. I starting smoking cigarettes and pot as well as sleeping around and partying. I think because I wasn’t included in that scene at my old high school, I wanted to see what I was missing. Turned out that I really wasn’t missing much. Once I was through with massage school, I got my first massage job and realized I wasn’t making enough money to support both me and my boyfriend at the time. I was living with him and his family, and paid for everything for the two of us. By everything I mean, food, entertainment, drugs, and fuel for my car. So I got another job as a bar tender and realized that if I was going to be working in the morning and afternoon as a massage therapist and then working through the night as a bartender, I would need something to keep me awake besides an energy drink. I started to use cocaine as a way to stay awake during my bar tending shifts and then smoked pot to sleep. After a while, I started to use more cocaine to stay thin so that my now ex boyfriend would still want to sleep with me. I then thought that if I provided drugs, my “friends” would still want to hang out with me.
After realizing that those people weren’t my friends and that boy really wasn’t good for me, I went on a bender. I did a LOT of coke that day and didn’t realize how much I had actually done, until it was day 3 and I still hadn’t slept. I decided that I really did want to sleep and that if I slept for an entire day, it wouldn’t do any harm. So I took one of my mom’s sleep medications from her drawers and took out 4 or 5 pills, and took them with a glass of water. I called my best friend who was deployed at the time and told him that I was done with all of the bullshit of life and that I just wanted to sleep. At that point, I had hit a manic low point and was severely coming down off of the cocaine. I also hadn’t taken my antidepressant that morning. At that point, I had been taking my SSRI (anti-depressant) for about 6 years and my body was totally reliant on it. My best friend got really worried after I hung up and found a way to contact my mom. They rushed me to the hospital and after I came out of my blacked out state, I was taken to a psychiatric hospital for 36 hours.
3 weeks later, I turned 21 and my new chapter of life had begun. I started working again and saved up money. I gained a promotion through the company I was with in only a year. I took my first trip out of the country about 18 months later and soon after started school.
Here I am now, 24 years old in pursuit of a nursing degree. I have struggled with my weight after sobering up from drugs and gained way more weight than suggested. I took the healthy way out this time and lost the weight with diet and exercise. I started looking at life in a positive way instead of the negative way that I had once learned. I am now a Health and Wellness coach for an amazing company and love every second of it. My goal with both nursing and the wellness coaching is to travel around with nonprofit organizations that help both men and women that have been victims of sex trafficking. I feel so blessed beyond belief to have such an amazing life right now. I am being weaned off of my mood stabilizer and continuing to use nutrition and botanically based medicines to help control my mental health.”
Here is an interview with her.
1. What, according to you, is women empowerment?
To me Women empowerment is letting women of all ages know that there is an option to pursue their goals and dreams even when they’ve been knocked down multiple times. It’s lifting women up through encouragement and love. It’s showing those that have been through the hardest of struggles and defeat that they are NOT defeated and that they CAN bring life back into their lives.
2. What motivates you to continue your work as a wellness coach?
What motivates me to continue to be a wellness coach is the pure fact of knowing that there are people out there struggling with similar problems as I once did. I love knowing that by answering a simple question about nutrition or exercise I can help improve someone’s regiment of health and wellness. I am so grateful that I have been given the tools to help bless people with the knowledge of healthy living both nutritionally and mentally.
3. What was the hardest part about recovering from drug addiction? Can you share some tips on how recovered drug addicts can stay on track?
The hardest part about recovering from drug addiction for me, was forgiving myself for falling so low. It was really hard to get past the fact that I felt like I had failed both myself and my family. But, with the encouragement of my parents telling me that they were proud of me when I hit small milestones in my recovery and my therapist telling me that I was progressing and making big strides, I learned that forgiveness was easy to achieve once I allowed myself to be forgiven. As for keeping on track and staying away from drugs, I am one of the lucky ones; I don’t feel that pull towards going backwards like most recovering addicts do. I am very fortunate in that once I dropped those people that were toxic in my life and discovered what a TRUE friend was, that pull ceased to exist. Really it was the first few weeks of being without a “social” life if you call it that, that was just weird. Once I jumped through that hurdle, I quickly found new hobbies and outlets to move on with my life.
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