In this deeply transformative episode, Wendy sits down with Denise Michelle, known as The Self-Love Alchemist, whose life story reveals how profound healing can emerge from trauma, addiction, and identity collapse. Denise shares how self-love, when rooted in truth and intentional living, becomes the foundation for fulfillment, calling, and co-creating a life with God by design — not default.
Some transformations don’t happen all at once — they unfold through layers of surrender, courage, and conscious choice.
In this episode of Healed. Whole. Called., Wendy welcomes Denise Michelle, an award-winning life coach, hypnotherapist, and trainer with Tony Robbins, whose life reflects the power of deep inner work paired with vision-driven action. Denise begins by sharing the unlikely foundation of her calling: growing up in a chaotic, emotionally unsafe household shaped by generational trauma and borderline personality disorder.
From an early age, Denise was searching for love — first externally, through relationships, validation, and addiction-based coping patterns, and eventually inward, through radical self-examination and healing. Promiscuity, love addiction, depression, anxiety, and the aftermath of childhood sexual abuse all became part of her story — not as defining labels, but as invitations to look deeper.
Her turning point came in her mid-twenties when she realized her behaviors were harming someone she loved. That awareness opened the door to therapy, diagnosis, and a painful but necessary collapse of identity. Denise shares honestly how learning she had borderline personality disorder felt like both devastation and clarity — the ground giving way beneath her feet while simultaneously revealing the mountain she was meant to climb.
Years of intensive therapy followed. Then, in 2008, standing at the edge of ending her life, Denise chose instead to surrender control and enter an outpatient treatment program. What followed was not just recovery, but reconstruction — of identity, purpose, and direction. As healing progressed, Denise recognized something profound: her pain was not just for her. She was being prepared to serve.
Through yoga teaching, meditation, coaching, and later advanced leadership training, Denise stepped into life as an instrument for healing — allowing transformation to flow through her rather than striving to control outcomes. Wendy and Denise explore the distinction between ego-self and higher-self, and how true self-love is not self-focus, but alignment with who God created us to be.
The conversation deepens as Denise shares a second major turning point during the COVID years, when she lost five family members in just twelve months — including her mother, her compass. In the midst of overwhelming grief, Denise entered another dark night of the soul that led her into intensive leadership work and ultimately to a radical life shift.
That shift took her from California to Bali — seemingly overnight.
Guided step by step, Denise describes how obedience, trust, and conscious vision-setting led her to leave behind 24 years of life, sell nearly everything she owned, and move across the world with only three bags. In a moment both symbolic and unforgettable, she shares how rescuing a drowning chicken on a dark beach became the confirmation she was meant to stay — a reminder that calling often arrives in unexpected forms.
Now living minimally and intentionally, Denise speaks about designing life through aligned action rather than fear-based reaction. She explains that fear is not a stop sign, but a qualifier — inviting us either to retreat into old patterns or rise into new identity. True change, she reminds listeners, doesn’t happen after circumstances shift — it happens when we do.
This episode is an invitation for anyone standing at the edge of change, wondering if they’re brave enough to step forward.
Because healing is not about becoming someone new.
It’s about remembering who you were created to be.
Listeners who want to explore Denise’s work further can connect with her here:
Website: https://bridgethelove.com
Instagram: @DeniseMichelleXOXO
Book: Embrace Your Worth: The Ultimate Guide to Self-Love Mastery
Denise offers coaching, courses, retreats, and tools designed to help people heal deeply and live intentionally.