Michelle Kunz

Michelle Kunz Quick Facts

Main Areas: Codependency, Love Addiction, Relationships
Career Focus: Speaker, Author, Professional Singer, Certified Coach
Affiliation: Your Love Voice

Growing up, I was the quintessential “good girl”, trying hard to be obedient and make everyone proud of me. But I always did something wrong, so it never worked and I felt like a failure. I frequently sought relief from my “warts” – those ugly feelings of failure, anger, fear, and despair – by dreaming of the day when my Knight in Shining Armor would come and sweep me off my feet. He would take me off to the life of my dreams, filled with love and happiness – forever! I learned how to change myself in numerous and dramatic ways to try to make men (and others) happy and most definitely to make the relationship work. But nothing ever produced the image of my fantasies, and all I could do was watch my dreams end in drama, chaos, and tears time after time.

After three marriages and several children, I had all but given up on love. Then, one night in the summer of 2012, everything changed. I was – again – in a committed relationship and – again – not very happy with it. As always, I was hiding my “ugly” feelings of rage, shame, guilt, grief, and helplessness. And then one night I caught my partner lying to me about looking at internet porn – AGAIN – and everything came to a screeching halt.

In that moment, I knew that I had a choice. I could continue to live this gigantic LIE – this fantasy that he was the man I had been waiting for (he was NOT), that this relationship was everything I wanted (it was NOT), and that my life was amazing and happy and fulfilling (it was NOT) – OR I could kill the fantasy and live in reality. And I knew that if I chose reality, there would be no going back. Cinderella and the Prince would be dead.

I chose to kill the fantasy. I told myself the truth about myself, my partner, and my life, and grieved it hard. Then, to a group of people whose opinions mattered to me, I told the brutal truth of everything I had ever done that I was ashamed of. And with that, I finally began to let go of the anger, fear, expectations, bitterness, anxiety, and burden I had been carrying with me for so long. I was awakening from what I’d come to think of as my trance and beginning to experience what true love and freedom were really about.

I’d like to be able to tell you that I never get trapped back in my obsessive thinking any more, but the truth is there is still a wounded little girl inside of me who gets triggered from time to time and wants me to come back into the well-known fantasies to escape the pain of the moment. But now that I’m awake, I have no desire to return to the trance! I can clearly see now what it cost me to be asleep all those years, and I am committed to being fully present in the reality, no matter how uncomfortable it might seem – and helping other women do the same. That is my passion and mission!

I KNOW now what I never knew in those days: that there is a divine energy of great love in and around us at all times. And our purpose is to FEEL it and pass it on so the world knows it, too. But to fulfill that purpose we have to STOP trapping ourselves in fantasies and lies – and dare to bare our true selves completely. We have to let go of the love addiction and codependency, embrace recovery, and learn how to let our voices sing! Trust me, we are safer and far more powerful fully exposed than we EVER are in hiding.

That’s the message conveyed in my programs, which I’ve developed to pay forward the immense growth I’ve had and help women like you stop selling themselves out for love. Stop shutting up when they should be speaking up; STOP spending fortunes making themselves more desirable; STOP doing things they don’t want to do; STOP thinking a man will make everything better – and learn what true love really is. To find their “Love Voice.” To do this, they will find power in both their figurative “voice”, and their physical voice.

I earned my doctorate in vocal performance from The Catholic University of America. I’ve sung with the chorus of the Washington National Opera for over fifteen seasons on the stage of the Kennedy Center Opera House. I’ve appeared in recital at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Hall, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and Monticello. I’ve sung in France and in Italy, and taught voice at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC. I bring these qualifications to bear in helping women find the power of their physical voice by learning how to strengthen and increase the balance and flexibility of their naturally beautiful speaking voices which will in turn bring forth the full resonant beauty and natural power within them.

Additionally, I earned my coaching certificate at iPEC Coaching, where I was also a trainer for their Washington, DC school. I earned my second level credential from the International Coach Federation, and I am qualified to deliver the Myers-Briggs and Energy Leadership assessments. I bring these qualifications to bear in helping women find the great power of their figurative “voice”, where they express their truth – their feelings, reality, needs and wants – with grace, dignity, love, and respect for all involved.

I understand the terrible price I paid for hiding, silencing, and otherwise misusing my figurative “voice” as I lived in fantasy where warts of all kinds are unacceptable, and I’m here now to enable women who have been negatively impacted by addictive or obsessive behavior to discover their immutable value as they powerfully and freely give rise to their “Love Voice”.

Contacting Michelle Kunz