Allow Me to Introduce Myself

Who Am I?

Welcome to Nitz Clear Focus! My name is Rachael and I am a Christian, a therapist, a mom, a wife, a veteran, a CrossFit junky, and a health enthusiast. It has been a long road getting

here and I am excited to share with you all about myself and how I believe true health is achieved. But I don't think I can start you out here... I think I need to go way back and start from the beginning so you can see how I got here.

Where I Started...

I grew up in a small town in Northern Wisconsin. I have two younger sisters and my parents were teenage parents. My dad joined the Navy shortly after finding out I was coming a long and they were married about a year after I was born.

I grew up fast. I took responsibility for my life at a young age and haven't looked back. When it came time to make decisions about my future, I only had one option in my mind: join the navy. Coming from a small town, all I wanted was to get out and experience what the world had in store for me.

And man! The world had a lot in store for me. I got to travel the world being stationed in Japan and got to find the man of my dreams.

I married my husband in 2011 after first meeting him in 2008. I left the navy and started my journey toward becoming a mental health professional.

You see… in 2008 I started taking college classes while deployed on my ship and one of the classes I took was Psychology 101 and it changed my life. I always thought I would be a lawyer at some point, but this class answered so many questions I had about why people are the way they are. And I was really good at listening. It’s when I decided I wanted to be a therapist.

But life as a military spouse means not doing things efficiently at times. We were living in Washington but would only be there for a year before moving to Virginia, so I made a goal of getting my associate’s degree before we left. Then, while we were living in Virginia, I got my bachelor’s degree in psychology.

Virginia was also where we decided to expand our family and add little miss Maddie to the group. She was such a struggle to have. It took us quite some time to get pregnant and a lot of disappointment and then it took a very scary delivery to bring her earthside.

While I will dive into that story later, today that one isn’t as important. The point is that with her in our life and us now moving back to Japan for a few years, I had to put my goal of being a therapist on the backburner.

It would be another 7 years before I would graduate with my master’s and become a therapist.

Being a Personal Trainer

During this time, I was a stay-at-home mom for part of it while my husband deployed regularly. Maddie and I traveled to so many great places in Japan and enjoyed exploring nature and getting healthy as a family. I was running a personal training business part-time and just enjoying bringing health to others.

If you’ve been a member on this site for a while, then that’s probably what you originally came here for. I made the decision earlier last yeaf to completely close my business for a multitude of reasons but the biggest is because of my passion for holistic health.

I fell in love with health after having Maddie. She truly changed my life. She made me want to be a better version of myself because she deserves that. I have never lost that passion even when I stopped training individuals; I’m just going about it in a different way.

Holistic Health

I’ve mentioned a few times that I believe in holistic health and here’s what I mean by that. True health happens at the intersection of 5 aspects of health: spiritual health, physical health, emotional health, intellectual health, and social health. As a therapist, I get to be better equipped to help people achieve this and my background in fitness and nutrition only helps.

You see, I was trying to incorporate all these aspects as a personal trainer, and I think the world wasn’t ready for it yet. I remember a specific post I had made on Facebook where a woman hopped on upset that I was trying to wear so many “different hats.” But in recent years I have started to see the evidence for what I was doing years ago start to come out.

There is a huge connection between how you feel physically and your mental state. For example, learning new things improves your confidence which in turn makes you more social. And on it goes. There are so many connections between these five aspects that help lead to overall better health. It’s so crazy!

What is This Page Now?

This year I took on a word to guide my actions and that word has been obedience. Specifically, obedience toward God and what he wants in my life. It started by putting myself “out there” to speak at my first women’s conference. I will be speaking at the Known Women’s conference in October in Green Bay, WI as an online exclusive speaker. (you can find details of that here)

Then I said yes to hosting Mental Health Monday sessions for Women and Warriors which is a virtual bible study group designed by and for female veterans. (find more info here).

Which has opened the door to more and more opportunities. This is why I wanted to revamp and rebrand this website. I wanted a place that I could share my different talks (morphed into blogs) and share what I am working on and my passion.

I realized that many of these opportunities were already linking my website to theirs, so I figured why not? If it helps me reach more people, then that’s great!

So, welcome to the new website. Welcome to my rebrand. I do not have an agenda as to how often I will be posting new content here but at a minimum you will find my Mental Health Monday topics once a month on here. Maybe I will even share some of the mental health activities I create for my clients. Who knows!

I would love to have you subscribe to my website and follow me on the socials and comment on what I write and give me your thoughts and ideas because I want to provide information you will find valuable.

Anyway…

Here’s to being obedient to God and seeing what He has in store for me. And sharing it with you!

Much Love and Blessings,

Rachael