My story

Meet Andréa Ruth Walker 

COVID. That happened.  So there is that.

I found myself divorced from a long term relationship, starting over and burnt out from all my efforts towards building up a large Day Spa company with many valued employees and clients.  I had made a career out of finding ways to touch people in an effort to connect with my purpose in life by attaining pretty much every diploma and certification that is possible in the world of Personal Care. COVID was the stimulant that I needed to change my way of life.

Why had I gone through all the effort to become so educated in all these things? Simple, I did not understand that I could just be Andréa.  With her Unique Abilities and Talents, I wasn’t even aware that it was an option.

As a young child under 5, I was often hospitalized. I was born with two deformed feet and had an experimental operation at McMasters University called a Lateral Release. My surgeons thought that they could straighten my feet but that I would spend my life wheelchair bound. My stay in the hospital lasted for a number of years, I was released just before starting Kindergarten.

I was a Gifted Child and highly sensitive to others’ thoughts and feelings. To pass the time I felt drawn to sit the patients that were terminally ill. The nurses often had challenges keeping an eye out for me, I was more interested in visiting, singing and praying with the people I could feel calling out to me.

During a stay at home, my church, led by Rev. David Maise held a contest put on for the teenagers.  The prize was a bible that would be given by one of the first ever Protestant Missionaries to Africa. He was 92 at that time. I was enchanted with the idea that I could win a prize given by someone who had travelled so far. My mother arranged for me to go and give talks in the schools, colleges and universities in the City of Hamilton, Ontario. I would talk about my feet, the challenges I faced, the pain I felt living with the bones in my feet delicately pinned together, the outcome that the doctors had felt would be the best I could hope for and how I believed that God would heal me so I could walk.

The following year, I was released from the hospital and I was no longer wheelchair bound, I had achieved my goal to walk. My mother later told me that she would often tell people that I didn’t walk, I pranced, I skipped and I danced everywhere I went.  At the same time Rev. Mainse was launching a TV program for children called Circle Square.  He asked me if I would be interested in speaking at the opening event held at the George R Robinson Bandshell Amphitheatre.  This was very exciting for me, I felt honoured to have a voice for Children. I had overcome so much in my short life and I wanted other children to believe that great things were possible for them too.

 Life happens to people. We all have a story made up of happy and unhappy events. Some of my life’s events after the age of 5 led me to believe that it was not safe to Shine so bright. So, I began as a young teenager to look for other avenues to express my unique ability to touch people’s lives in a meaningful and transformative ways.  I was a volunteer at Homes for Seniors where I sang and developed a program visiting elderly people. I encouraged other people my age to make gifts during the different holiday seasons and  as a group we would spread cheer. I looked at different career options and settled on the world of Spa services. This led me to where I found myself on March 16th, 2020, COVID shutdown.

The path of least resistance is to be like water. Water flows, it finds the cracks and, with time, widens those cracks into a stream, a river, a lake…

And so it began, the road of unravelling, of introspection and asking myself what is driving me to continue as I was.  At the core of every Diploma I ever attained was the desire to come in contact with people and change lives. What I came to understand was that the exhaustion I felt was due to Doing instead of Being.

 Being Andréa is much simpler and much more rewarding. I decided to look for ways to return to My Own Self. Learn to express, channel and amplify my abilities without using the Spa services I had built up as a way to attract people to me. I enrolled in courses that would develop my talents instead of disguising them as something else. Some would see it as a radical change, I see it as a radical return to all the things that made up the remarkable things that I could accomplish just by being myself.

Have you found yourself at a crossroads?  Are you wondering how you ended up where you are?  Really are not sure what is possible, but you know that you want a change?  There are paths that you can take to transform the different aspects that make up a balanced and joyful life. Let’s take this journey together.