A little update on what I'm offering, coaching-wise

Less gurus, more caring conversations that bring us back to ourselves

The first aesthetically pleasing image I had on hand lol

Five years ago, I put myself through a coaching certification program recommended to me by John and Margi Dehlin, because I wanted to help people navigate life outside of high-control groups like Mormonism in a more one-on-one way. Since then, I’ve been lucky enough to meet with so many interesting and wonderful people in that capacity, and it’s been really rewarding, energizing work.

I want to continue supporting ex-Mormons (and other people who have left high-control groups) through coaching for as long as they’re interested in my services. I’ve never felt the need to put pressure on my coaching “business”—the goal has always been to try and provide care and value to whoever feels inclined to meet with me, and I’ve trusted that I don’t need to hustle or do the kind of aggressive marketing I find so off-putting in the coaching world in order to do that. (Most people have found me through YouTube and just felt like we’d get along well, which is so fun!) We’re all drawn to different people at different times and I love that I get to learn more about a surprisingly wide demographic of humans through coaching.

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about how we are each other’s best survival strategy. It’s been so clear to me in the years I’ve spent coaching that ultimately, the most significant thing I can offer people is a safe, compassionate space of deep listening. I’ve always been averse to overt advice-giving in sessions, as per professional guidelines (despite offering far too much unsolicited advice to friends in my unprofessional life), and have found that most of us are perfectly capable of finding our own answers to the challenges we face when we explore them with non-judgment, curiosity, and love. Good lines of questioning also really help, of course.

Basically, I think sometimes we just need to ground ourselves in a good fucking chat to move forward more effectively and joyfully and creatively, and coaching can be a great tool for helping us meet that need under capitalism! (I love it here.) We don’t need gurus promising to fix us or complicated blueprints handed to us by others, though there’s obviously a time and place for a good framework and there are great therapists and coaches who offer robust curriculums. (My own approach is obviously informed by the frameworks I’m drawn to, but I don’t need others to adopt them for us to have a helpful conversation.)

Sometimes people show up to sessions needing to spend a few minutes taking deep breaths together before we can really get into it all. Almost all of us are perfectly capable of taking deep breaths by ourselves, but there can be something so lovely about doing it with someone else, even over Google Meet. It can really change the quality of our thinking and being. I love seeing how a person’s energy can shift in a 45-minute coaching session simply because they felt heard and cared about and got to process their feelings/challenges out loud, and that’s become the heart of what I’m interested in providing, where possible.

Not everyone has a friend they can hop on FaceTime with for an hour to discuss what’s truly on their heart and mind, and even those of us who do can often benefit from talking to someone who’s a bit more removed—especially if that person has learned healthy coaching principles and can gently guide the discussion in useful ways. I know many people are also looking to increase the amount of support they receive outside of therapy, because a lot of my clients tell me they’ve had extensive therapy already, or they currently have a therapist they see regularly.

The term “life coach” has always made me cringe and I haven’t found a term that doesn’t, if I’m being honest. But right now, “intentional living support coach” feels like the most accurate way I can describe what I’m offering. I realize words like “offering” all sound a bit flowery and dramatic (depending on your algorithm) given that I’m essentially just advertising a paid service here, but I wanted to give a clearer sense of what my coaching services look like as I’m finding myself thinking about it a bit differently lately.

That’s all! Love you, hope you’re staying sane. Let me know if you’re interested in coaching but have significant financial limitations and I’ll try to offer you the biggest discount I can.

You can book a session with me here if you’d like to. :)