Welcome! I am Mary Couturier – and this is my story.

I always wanted to be in some type of “helping” professional. Not necessarily sales but an environment where I could help people. This led me to my educational path of social work through a college and university in my area. These experiences began to open doors which led me to my first real career as a program coordinator/counselor in a victim’s unit within a local police department.

This opportunity was a mind altering as this was my first glance into the traumatic situations many women and children are faced with throughout their lives. Helping to provide counseling and support to primarily women in crisis gave me a greater understanding, appreciation and gratitude for the life that I had been given and strengthened my desire to help women leave violent situations and become independent. I wanted to make a difference.

I continued in this line of work eventually collaboratively setting up a second victim’s unit within another police service. In conjunction with a grassroots community board of directors myself and two other staff created a program that was so successful it eventually became integrated into the local police service. I loved this work and found it to be extremely rewarding. We had a community voice and provided support and crisis to women facing violent situations.

Through this experience, I again saw almost daily the lack of power these women had and how they lacked the confidence, the means to live independently. I wondered so often if these women had another option, would they have the strength to leave and create their own life. I continued on this path which eventually led me to a career in policing which has shaped my life both in positive and negative ways but nevertheless shape me as a person. Shortly after my career change, I found myself divorced, a single mother with a relatively small lump sum and two young children. This was truly when I became who I was meant to be.

I worked tirelessly 12 hours shifts, commuting, and with the help of family and an angel caregiver, I managed to purchase a home and start building a future for my family. The next 15 years of my life were spent trying to juggle, multitask, manage and balance, family, policing, teaching, and a home business. Through these years my sense of “listlessness as I called it led me to several physical moves cities and houses trying to find the space of contentment.

I loved policing and helping people but still wanted to expand or do something where I could be my own boss and create the life that wanted, so I got my real estate license and through savings and continuing to work tirelessly, my life began to change. My relationship with my finances improved and my assets grew and at times I look back and think the real reason I’ve succeeded was not necessarily the education but the determination to never give up. I continued with my education and spend most of my time working with clients on helping them find their “dream” whatever that may be. First home, investment home, flip home or rental home, all these options are very unique and bring a unique investment. I never stopped learning and so in continues in the path of appraising to add another dimension of knowledge and understanding to value and home assessment.

QUOTE

My greatest attribute and one that every woman has within her is the determination to make a life! Every single woman, girl I have met has that quality inside them. The strength and tenacity is simply just clothed and masked in a different manner. Sometimes hidden and buried beneath fear, hopelessness, shelved in behind day to day responsibilities’, tucked in a drawer or between the pages of their high school year book. Enveloped perhaps in the storage box beside those old love letters. Wherever it is, however deep it can surface, it can be developed it can be nurtured it can be found!

Let’s take this journey together

“Inevitably when we help each other we find ourselves”

Every opportunity ….is an opportunity

Every day is a new chance to turn it all around