Overview:
Coach Dee, a mental health and social services professional, used her experiences to create a movement in Detox Life Coaching, focusing on mental health, spiritual care, and unapologetic truth. She realized that she needed to heal herself before helping others and stepped away from a secure government job to start her own business. She now coaches and mentors people to come home to themselves and build a legacy of liberation for their children.
For years, Coach Dee was the one behind the curtain—handling crises, guiding people through chaos, helping them breathe again. With over 15 years in mental health and social services, she carved out a path in government agencies, nonprofits, and transitional care centers. She was the first call when life broke down. The fixer. The calm in the storm. Especially for those who looked like her—Black, queer, and chronically underserved by the very systems meant to support them.
But here’s what most people didn’t see: the healer needed healing, too.
“I was good at helping people,” she says. “But there was so much of me I hadn’t accepted yet.”
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Coach Dee grew up wrapped in scripture and expectations. A preacher’s kid in a lineage of ministers, she was raised to serve, to shine, and to suppress anything that didn’t fit the church’s mold. And as a queer, masculine-of-center Black woman, she learned early on how to perform light while hiding the shadows.
“I was out, in a relationship, living life—but I was still hiding so much of me,” she admits. “Even with all the work I was doing for others, I hadn’t really accepted myself.”
Eventually, that duality cracked. You can only carry everyone else’s truth for so long before your own starts demanding air.
Her revolution didn’t come with explosions. It came with a pen.
Journaling had always been a refuge—her childhood lifeline when voices got loud and feelings went unspoken. But as an adult, those pages started turning into something else. Raw. Brave. Necessary.
“Writing gave me the space to express what I couldn’t always say out loud,” she says. “Growing up, if I said how I felt, it turned into yelling or tension. But when I wrote it down, it landed differently.”
That release turned into her first book. A gut-punch of a manuscript. True. Vulnerable. And terrifying.
(Photo courtesy of Coach Dee)
“I was scared as hell,” Dee confesses. “Not just about what people would think. I was worried about what my family would say. But I had to tell my story—not to blame anyone, but to finally heal.”
When she released it, the fear gave way to freedom.
“It felt like a weight was lifted,” she says. “And people got it. They saw themselves in it. And that’s when I knew—this is bigger than me.”
That one book became three. A fourth is on the way. And somewhere along the line, she realized she wasn’t just telling her story—she was helping others tell theirs, too. Her clients started writing. Publishing. Speaking. Detox Life Coaching was born.
She stepped away from the security of systems and created her own lane. Not just a coaching business—a healing movement. Detox Life Coaching is where mental health, spiritual care, and unapologetic truth collide.
“It seems like everything I’ve done has been rooted in mental health—my own, first and foremost,” she says. “And that’s what led me to help others.”
But the real shift? It came when she made a private promise to her inner child.
“I told her I’d be the parent she never had. That I’d protect her. Make her feel safe. And I’ve never let that promise go.”
The journey wasn’t pretty. Especially coming from a faith background that taught her queerness was something to hide or heal. But Coach Dee carved her own theology—one rooted in grace, not shame.
“I had to stop giving a fuck about what other people thought,” she says bluntly. “I had to choose me. And when I did, I started attracting people who were ready to do the same.”
Now, her impact ripples. From queer youth in South Dallas to mothers breaking cycles of trauma, Dee’s not just coaching—she’s teaching people how to come home to themselves.
She remembers one client in particular. A queer mom who brought her daughter to a Dallas Wings game and later tagged Coach Dee in a post that stopped her cold.
“She said, ‘Coach told me—once you heal you, you’ll heal your daughter.’ And now, her daughter is blooming. That’s legacy to me.”
That’s the work. Not perfection. Not performance. But liberation—for the next generation and the ones after that.
“Everything’s not going to be perfect,” Dee says. “But if we do our healing now, our kids don’t have to suffer the way we did. They get a different kind of chance. That’s the legacy I want to leave.”
Coach Dee was recently honored for her work in the community at the Resource Center’s annual fundraiser. Even before she stepped up to accept her recognition, her presence said it all. She didn’t just walk in the room—she shifted it. That night, she wasn’t just being celebrated. She was embodying the very thing so many people in the room were looking for: proof that freedom is possible.
Coach Dee never set out to be a symbol. But symbols are born when someone lives loud in a world that tells them to stay quiet.
“I didn’t know it was going to come to this level,” she says. “But now that we’re here? I’m ready. Let’s get it.”
She’s not just coaching. She’s re-parenting her younger self, telling the truth others are scared to say, and building a future where visibility, healing, and power are non-negotiable.
Coach Dee isn’t asking for permission anymore. She’s leading—unapologetically.
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