TESTIMONIAL
"Thank you. I don’t know if I’d have gotten this far this fast without you, your encouragement and your amazingly great work."
Maureen E.
Signed Up for an Identity Intensive
A Story from Identity Coaching
(For anonymity we'll call her Emily)
I've known Emily for a long time... like... a LONG time. And the Emily I've always known is wildly brave and completely unphased by all the anxieties and self-doubts that exist in literally every other human being I've ever met. So I was surprised when we started working together and she explained that somewhere along the line she'd become a complete ball of nerves who didn't think she could do anything. She was still living a great life on the outside, but on the inside she was spending so much of her time and energy hiding. She had been so burned by her previous career moves that she had lost all trust in people, and in herself. And that's a HARD PLACE to start a next chapter... so we talked. In 8 months she went from thinking she couldn't do anything and panic-applying to jobs out of fear (wile genuinely not wanting any of the jobs) to running her own consulting business, feeling in control of her life and her finances, and recognizing that freedom, flexibility, and rest are GOOD THINGS that she gets to let herself enjoy.
And here's why this matters: In the big picture of her life, nothing actually changed. She still lives in the same house, still married to the same guy, still has the same hobbies and grocery list. There were no big cataclysmic events that made this growth possible. Everything that happened to Emily happened on the inside. She changed. Over months of calls, I helped her to peel back the layers of things she'd been holding on to. Things she didn't need anymore, or maybe never needed. Things she'd overheard an adopted as fact. Assumptions about herself and the world that were hurting her more than she'd realized. Because none of those layers were actually real... but they had become very real to her.
In Identity Coaching my job wasn't to help Emily become someone new, it was to help her reconnect to the pieces of her that had been buried, to reminder her of what an absolute legend she is, and to give her the tools and support to practice those things in her every-day life.
These days our calls aren't about "who am I" or "what should I do with my life" anymore, because they don't need to be. Emily is embracing the open-endedness of the life ahead of her. She knows who she is, she knows what she's doing now, and she knows that no matter what ends up happening she's going to be ok. She's learning to trust her intuition for the first time ever, and is taking her consulting business one project at a time. Why? Because balance. And because that's what works for Emily. She's doing this fun thing and enjoying it because it is genuinely fun and enjoyable. When things come up, we talk them through. In the talking, she gets the answer she needs and gets to move on from whatever she was worried about. It's as simple, and as powerful, as that.
TESTIMONIAL
"Every time I haven't wanted to get on a call because I just felt too lost or grumpy, you have met me exactly where I need to be met and just stood beside me, offering insight, support as a venting/sounding board. Being on a call with you is not a moment of support - it's an ongoing light in the dark."
Ashleigh H.
Signed up for Identity for Entrepreneurs
A Story from an Identity Intensive
(For anonymity we'll call her Amy)
Amy has spend a lifetime apologizing. Which, you can imagine, doesn't feel great. And the things she spent that lifetime apologizing for weren't things she'd done... it was for who she is.
Amy is gay and for many, many years... through coming out of the closet, getting married to the love of her life, and growing a beautiful family... she was somehow still, sort of, in the closet. Not because she was hiding, but because she just kept on feeling like she needed to come out of something. Like she needed to give business prospects a heads-up, in case it might make them uncomfortable down the road. That's an apology.
She also made a habit of driving herself into the ground, volunteering for everything, taking on more than she needed to, being the most useful person in the room... because she felt like she needed to compensate for something. That's an apology, too.
So one of the great things that came out of our Identity Intensive was a homework assignment.
Do Nothing.
That's it. For 15 minutes a day, just... do nothing. Don't be useful. Don't help anyone. No accomplishments, no distractions, just BE. Exist as a human being who has nothing to prove or apologize for. (Because... that's what she is, right? Right.) And I cannot tell you how many times I checked in to see if she'd done her homework. Day after day, the answer was no.
Until one day. Amy sent me an excited email letting me know that she'd DONE it!! Nothing!! She'd actually DONE NOTHING!! She was thrilled and told me the most beautiful story. While she was doing nothing, her teenage daughter had come up to her and said "Mom... what are you doing?", to which she replied "Nothing. I'm doing nothing." And then, in true teenage fashion, her daughter said "Mom, you're so weird. Why are you crying?"
.... Amy hadn't realized she was crying. But she was.
In all the rushing around, all the keeping herself busy, and all the trying to keep ahead of everyone nso she doesn't disappoint them, she'd been missing out on the time it takes to feel feeling. And I don't mean "I feel sad" feelings, I mean the kinds of feelings that don't come with words. The deep aches that happen all the time and when we DON'T give ourself time to feel them they get squished down and calcify into resentment or self-hate.
So she sat there, and feelings happened, and then she got up and got back to her day. Identity Intensives don't create earth-shaking change. They're a 90 minute session where we can usually get to just one, maybe two things. But the magic is that it doesn't take big earth-shaking changes for your life to start feeling better. Like something that actually belongs to you. Like something you don't have to apologize for.
TESTIMONIAL
"When you reflected back the vision of my future that I hadn’t quite put into words yet, it felt like you really saw what I meant. Even when I couldn’t fully say it, and then you shaped it into something real, powerful, and beautiful.
Thanks again for being such a big part of this journey. You helped me feel seen, and now I get to help others feel that way, too."
Andrea L.
Signed up for Identity Coaching
A Story from Identity For Entrepreneurs
(For anonymity we'll call her Sonya)
This has to be my all time favorite stories, because the transformation is SO REAL and SO DEEP. Because Sonya is a business owner, which... if you're a business owner too, you'll know that entrepreneurship tends to bring up AAAAALLL your deepest insecurities. Like how motherhood does, but even more personal. If your kid is acting up, there are all kinds of things you can blame it on. If the business is failing or if things aren't selling, well that's just on you. It's hard and it's real and it was getting to Sonya. But not for the reasons you might think.
You see, Sonya was a bad-ass. She had been kicking butt and taking names in her career for well over a decade and she had the success rate to prove it. The problem was that the business she'd built over all those years wasn't satisfying that deep place that entrepreneurship comes from. That well of passion and hope and conviction wasn't being replenished and the work that used to light her up just made her feel... empty. She couldn't give it up entirely, because there were bills to be paid, but she kept feeling this pull toward something new: Mindset Coaching. The shift from social media manager to mindset in marketing coach was a pretty simple one, so she asked me to come in and help her with a rebrand (which is something I do).
When we got on our first rebrand call, I told her "Ok, this is an easy one. I see all the moving pieces, I see the bigger picture, and all I need from you to make it happen is a handwriting sample." She nodded enthusiastically and told me she'd get it to me right away. But... I didn't get the handwriting sample. On the next call I asked for it again and got the same happy yesses and nods but... nothing in my inbox.
The problem was that Sonya didn't know who she was. And I don't mean that as a deep existential "who am I??" kinda thing, I mean that literally. She didn't know what to call herself. Throughout that whole impressive career, her last name was her husband's last name. A husband who was now an EX-husband and who she didn't want to be associated with anymore. But... should she go back to her maiden name? The name she'd been a kid in? Would she be taking a step backward into an old identity? Would she lose all the courage and strength she'd earned under her married name?
These might sound like silly questions on the surface, but when you're IN this experience they are VERY big and VERY real. She didn't want to be 16 again, all full of insecurities and angst. And she didn't want to be stuck with some jerk's last name forever, but she also didn't want to lose herself and the reputation she'd earned with that name. Until one day. We were on a zoom call and she had this GLORIOUS opening up.
She could finally feel it and the realization broke over her like the dam bursting and releasing all the flood waters. She was awash with JOY and she knew... she wasn't stepping back, she wasn't staying stuck, she was growing into something NEW. This new person, with an old name, wasn't going to be the same person she'd been as a kid. Releasing all those stories and assumptions was her first BIG step toward becoming fully herself.
As an entrepreneur, it's really easy to want everything to happen quickly. What could have been a month or two of rebranding turned out to need 6 months of identity coaching first. But man... when that rebrand finally hit it was WILD. If we'd jumped right into the design, I say it would have taken a month or two because there would have been a lot of fear, a lot of revisions, a lot of back and forth and I'm not sure. Because we took the time to work out what was happening inside of her, on an identity level first, the rebrand ended up taking less than a day. One round of revisions, no back-and-forth, no second-guessing, just... done. Easy. Simple. Done.
And she admitted, after, that if she'd sent me the handwriting sample after that first call and I'd created exactly the same thing to present to her, she would have said no. She would have balked and said it wasn't right. Because SHE wasn't ready. She needed that time to talk through what was happening inside of her, to get the reassurances and the support from me to know in her DEEPEST layers, that this was the right choice. That she could be ready for this. And because we took that time, because she learned those lessons and had those breakthroughs first, she was truly ready. The brand we came up with was perfect. And she was ready for it.
TESTIMONIAL
"I just want to say thank you for giving me the space to handle my own freak outs and teaching me how to take your genius and gifts and make them work for me. Thank you. From the very deepest part of my soul that feels seen. Thank you."
Laura S.
Signed up for Identity for Entrepreneurs