Coaching and therapy are not the same thing, and you should be wary of any coach that tells you that our work is a safe replacement for therapy. Coaches are not therapists. Period.

The following stems from my experience as a coach who is married to a therapist. In addition, I’m personally familiar with a great number of therapeutic modalities through my journey to successfully heal from the relics of intergenerational trauma, and have also worked with coaches in my professional and personal life. I am a huge proponent of both.

Therapy focuses on emotional well-being and the healing of emotional wounds, patterns, and challenges. These may arise from trauma, complicated history, interpersonal challenges or more severe mental health struggles. They can also arise from the stresses of day-to-day life; overwhelm, workplace, relationships and more. Therapists undergo rigorous training in order to safely support your emotional well-being.

Sometimes you don’t need therapy; you might be at a personal juncture and need a skillful ally to help you sift through the tangles of your own thoughts and come to a little clarity on what you want and who you want to be (or are). Right now, our society forces you to do that in your own head, or hope that your friends (or a lot of personal journalling) can help you get there. That is the gap that coaching fills; that is the gap that I’m here to fill. Coaching (with me) is an inwardly-directed effort to help you explore and find clarity on who you are and what you want, need or would like to shift in order to experience a more integrated life. Our focus is not on healing - it’s on clarity.

Now, YOU are a whole person - not a series of compartments. So while therapists and coaches have our independent roles, YOU will experience a ton of overlap between the two. A central aspect or byproduct of effective therapy is usually greater clarity, insight and self-awareness; as you heal and your emotional vocabulary and comfort expands, you will grow to know yourself better and evolve. And a byproduct of coaching can certainly be some healing, or increased emotional well-being; after all, living in alignment with who you are is much less painful than resisting yourself at every turn.

So it’s really about what you need right now, and who is best equipped to offer it to you.

Sometimes the two things meet: a byproduct of coaching can also be increased awareness of the emotional wounds, patterns and challenges that are most safely supported and disrupted in therapy. For this reason, I generally prefer to work with clients who have experienced successful therapy in the past and are open to resuming if needed, or plan to continue therapy while working with me. Sometimes, in the course of our exploration, we will inevitably realize that a thought or story you have about yourself stems from trauma, or old emotional wounds and patterns. If you continue therapy while coaching with me, you can safely take those insights to your therapist. I am extremely cautious and will always err on the side of gently moving us away from delving too deeply into topics that are inappropriate for me to safely support as a non-therapist.

Please note: *I do not work with clients who need therapeutic support, but are searching for a coach due to a sense of stigma around therapy.* As a coach, it is my responsibility to ensure that you are getting the support you need, from someone who is best trained and equipped to help you blossom and heal. Coaching is a joyous and disruptive process, and before we undertake it, I will do my best to make sure that you are emotionally safe to experience such disruption. It is with the greatest compassion that I will turn you away if you are coming to me solely in an effort to avoid therapy.

People don’t always realize that there’s a difference between coaching and consulting - but there is.

Consulting is about examining a challenge and then giving specific recommendations for change or improvement. A consultant examines a situation, determines what they believe the problem(s) to be, and prescribes solutions.

Coaching, on the other hand, is about using deep inquiry to help you find your own answers. As a coach, my job isn’t to tell you how to do things differently or “better.” I begin with the premise that you’re more than capable of figuring out answers and making changes within your own life, so if you’re having trouble doing so, it means something else is in the way.

Does this mean I just smile and nod at you? No, of course not. My job is to use tools, inquiry and intuition to help you unearth and understand the things that are causing you to feel stuck or uncertain in a specific situation or area of your life, and then help you figure out what you want to do with that information.

1. INDIVIDUALIZED ATTENTION vs. COMMUNITY:

​- In 1-1 coaching, our work is super intimate; I get to know you and your life or leadership style very, very well. I will know you deeply, rattle off the names of people, places and animals in your life, feel at home with your patterns, quirks, habits and details, and be in communication with you between sessions as well. You'll feel like I'm a core personal member of Team You - because I am.

​- AUDACITY/the Group Program is about the place where community meets your individual commitment to yourself. Yes, you'll be led by me and Eliot, but your experience is bigger than that. You don't just "happen to be" with 10 other peers; we will actually build your sense of collective solidarity and power. Calls will be facilitated in a way that helps you identify how things are happening for you, while also seeing that you are not alone in the ways you experience the world, or the courage it takes to show up for yourself. As we go, you'll start to feel an entire group of marginalized people - with different and similar identities to you - cheering you on every step of the way. We'll build a mini culture together!

​2. A CUSTOMIZED EXPERIENCE vs. STRUCTURE:

​​1-1 coaching begins with YOU: we start where you are and embark upon an exploratory process together. Yes, there is a clear shape to our sessions, but we're not following specific steps in a specific order. Instead, you bring the dilemmas or challenges you're grappling with and I bring a variety of inquiry tools to help you get greater clarity, adjusting based on what works for you and what emerges as most important to you. Over time, we start to see repeat patterns, and big, beautiful shifts.

​​The Group Program begins with guided structure: from our kickoff event to our weekly calls, each moment has a focus and a particular arc. WITHIN that, we'll have beautiful amounts of flexibility influenced by YOU - as individuals and a collective! We will facilitate you figuring out how the things we're addressing show up in your life and apply to the areas you're focusing on. We'll adapt as we go, while also maintaining a very focused and shared purpose together. This structure and being in a group can create a real sense of shared momentum and commitment to yourself.

3. COST

​​Individual coaching - because I take a limited number of people and give you a full year of hands-on attention...this works starts at 11,999 for a year of work / $999 per month (with higher resource-sharing rates for those of you that are well-resourced and want to support scholarships for the group program).

​​The Group Program enables us to reduce the cost because our time with you is collectively shared! The Group starts at $4000 or eight $500 installments and we're able to offer need-based scholarships when people pay resource sharing rates.

​Yes, I get that I'm supposed to pretend money isn't a thing, but let's be real: PART of why I worked furiously on making this group a reality is that I wanted to have a more financially accessible way for people to be able to engage with my work, while still experiencing impactful, important change.

For some of you, price may ultimately be the deciding factor in what is possible for you to do. If that's the case, I want you to know that AUDACITY is going to be its very own extraordinary experience, and I can't wait to talk with you about your hopes.

I can’t emphasize this enough: I’m not the coach for everyone, and I’m not pretending that I am. No one is the coach for “everyone.” (If they insist they are, it’s possible you’re actually talking to a cult leader.)

The truth is that finding your coach is a matter of fit. It’s about the perspective we each bring as people, the work we’re most skilled and passionate about facilitating, the way we facilitate it, our personalities, our training, our experience, our particular gifts and our particular flaws (hey, we’re people) - and how all those things intersect with what you need most at this moment. That also means that someone who is the right coach for you in one moment or context might not be the right coach for you in another.

I’m great at facilitating clarity: helping you cut through noise, recognize the things that have been blocking you, and drop into deep and joyful curiosity about yourself, rather than judgment. People who work with me routinely walk away feeling like you know yourself better, trust your own instincts and voice, and have a deeper faith in your own ability to navigate the questions in your life. This is the work I love to do; helping you uncover your own voice and clarity when those things feel obscured or tangled.

But what if a client that loved working with me comes to me a few years later, looking for concrete coaching on best practices for management? I’m going to recommend other coaches that I trust, whose gifts and passions lie in that area. One the other hand, if someone shows up and tells me that they’re trying to figure out who they are as a manager and how to translate that into their personal leadership style - then we might want to talk about my coaching work for leaders. So, as you can see, it’s subtle.

Integrity is hugely important to me. So if I recognize that I’m not the right fit for you, or I know a trusted colleague who would be truly wonderful for you - I’m going to get you to the right person. Always.

I can tell you this: when you meet the right coach in the right moment - you’ll feel seen, you’ll feel safe, you’ll feel curious, and you’ll start to feel the glimmer of excitement that comes from realizing you don’t have to figure it out alone.

The honest answer? You have to discern it yourself. At present, the coaching industry is only voluntarily regulated. In other words, we’re unregulated. We are not legally required to pass any kind of certification in order to market ourselves as coaches, nor are our practices legally governed by an official regulatory body. That means that someone who calls themselves a “professional coach” can really imply a variety of things: from a person who has never undergone any training and just watched a lot of YouTube videos, to someone who once did a 3-week online Groupon class, to those who have had rigorous forms of training and maintain ongoing education.

That’s where the whole “voluntarily regulated” thing comes in. Now, please note that I have mixed feelings about the notion of regulation from an equality perspective: who gets to do the gatekeeping, who maintains the power in these organizations, and the ways that regulation so often forces colonial and linear perspectives on people’s practices. There are many, many cultures that offer rigorous paths of wisdom through methods that don’t fit into the limiting bounds set by capitalism. That said, as someone who does call herself a Professional Coach, I also feel strongly about being held accountable to ethical standards of practice, and protecting you - my clients. I believe that part of supporting the trust you place in me is demonstrating that I have spent time developing my own skills, and that I am bound to a code of professional ethics.

Those of us who choose to be part of the International Coaching Federation are held to particular standards: we must complete an ICF-certified course, and concurrently complete all the qualifications in order to become eligible (which includes specific amounts of supervised observation, logged practice, a rigorous curriculum that covers all subject matter relevant to professional and ethical coaching practice, examination and certification from the course instructors themselves). And - perhaps most importantly - we must remain in professional good standing by abiding by the ICF Code of Ethics. This code covers everything from client confidentiality to ethical decision-making, the responsibilities (and boundaries) of coaching, as well as legal expectations.

I believe - first and foremost - in doing the best work I can do, and in being held accountable to a high standard. If I am asking you to place trust in me, it is important that I demonstrate my own professional accountability - which includes standards, ethics, and a commitment to ongoing education and skills that can make me the most effective coach I can possibly be. To see a full list of my credentials, training and experience, please visit this page about my coaching and scroll down to the final section.

Be wary of coaches that promise you specific external outcomes in your life: that you will find love, or you will achieve or attain XYZ thing. The reality is that we can only commit to the process we offer, and express how it might support your clarity and growth; what that leads is ultimately about where our shared exploration takes you. I can and will talk to you about what is internally possible, but I will never say that I know the external outcome of our work together; that is a mystery we get to discover together.