A trauma-informed, creative, and client-led approach to healing and growth
Coaching, at its best, is not a program you complete or a set of steps you, the client, follow. It’s a relationship—a space of collaborative presence and insight—built around your values, goals, and lived experience. At its most transformational, it’s a practice of remembering what you already carry inside you: your strength, your agency, your ability to grow, heal, and move forward.
As a certified trauma-informed coach, my approach is rooted in the belief that everyone (including you, including myself) is holding something unseen—painful histories, unanswered questions, sacred wounds. We might never end up re-visiting those stories in our work together, yet they shape who we all are, how we move through the world, and what we’re ready to pursue. Being trauma-informed isn’t just a checkbox I’ve completed in training—it’s a posture I try to bring to every encounter in my life, both personally and professionally. It means I expect complexity. I expect struggle. And I believe that even amid those things, deep down we are all still whole, still capable of growth, and still worthy of trust.
Below, I share the core values and perspectives that shape how I coach, both in private and group settings. This is not a list of rules or techniques, but a kind of reflection on the relational and ethical framework I strive to embody in each client encounter—whether I’m supporting someone through creative blocks, spiritual trauma, or the nonlinear work of post-traumatic growth.
(Learn more about the specifics of my services here.)
Trauma-Informed, Always
Being trauma-informed begins with humility: I never assume I know better what a survivor has been through, or what they’ve had to do to survive. I assume each person I cross paths with is carrying something sacred and hidden, and that this reality deserves tenderness and understanding, not scrutiny.
In practice, this means I prioritize:
- Safety and consent in everything from how sessions unfold to what kinds of questions are asked.
- Choice and autonomy, helping clients recognize and reclaim the power to set boundaries, say no, and choose the direction of our work together.
- Trust and transparency, so clients know what to expect and why.
- Empowerment, not advice-giving, as the core method of moving forward.
When trauma surfaces in coaching—as sometimes does—I am not surprised or thrown off. I have been trained to recognize trauma responses and to work gently and skillfully with clients as they navigate them. But more than that, I work with the understanding that trauma is not something to “fix” or “get past,” but rather something to integrate with honesty, creativity, and hope into the story of one’s life.
The Role I Play
Coaching is not about fixing you. It’s about walking with you—sometimes as a collaborator, sometimes as a mirror, sometimes as a coach in the athletic sense: cheering you on, helping you develop strategies, or calling attention to patterns that may be limiting your growth.
But at all times, I remain a peer. Like many of my clients, I am also working through experiences of spiritual trauma, creative recovery, grief, and deep personal transformation. I may be further along in some areas, and I bring training, perspective, and tools to our sessions, without assuming the role of an expert looking down from on high.
I also serve as a witness. A witness to your struggle, yes, but also to your strength, your perseverance, your subtle moments of breakthrough. Sometimes our most profound growth is invisible to us until someone helps us name it. I’m here for that naming.
And of course, I coach. I help you discern when to challenge yourself, when to rest, and how to clarify the outcomes you’re working toward. My job is not to push you harder or faster than you’re ready to go. It’s to help you align your internal landscape with the life you’re trying to build, and to remind you—when needed—that progress can look quiet, slow, and deeply internal.
Core Values in Practice
Autonomy and God-Given Freedom
Freedom is a sacred value in my work–free will is something God endowed humanity with in the beginning. For clients who come from high-control systems—religious, familial, or otherwise—learning to trust their own choices again can be challenging yet healing. I actively create space for you to set the tone, reject suggestions that don’t sit right, and discover or create options you may not have realized you had. Coaching, done well, becomes a practice ground for saying yes and no freely and safely.
Creativity and Meaning-Making
Healing, I believe, is not just clinical. It is creative. It’s a form of making something new from what was broken, confused, or incomplete. I weave creative tools into sessions—metaphors, images, brainstorming, unconventional prompts—especially with writers, artists, and those seeking to recover their voice. But this isn’t limited to the creatively inclined. Every human life, when fully lived, becomes a kind of art; and any step towards healing is an inherently creative act. In coaching, we make space for precisely that kind of artistry.
Non-judgment and Spaciousness
Many of my clients have internalized harsh or controlling moral frameworks that pathologize ordinary human emotions and needs. My role is not to replace those with new rules or standards, but to create a space where you are free to explore who you are without shame or expectation. I may challenge you at times, but never in a way that moralizes or sets parameters around your journey. You are free to define your own values, your own growth, your own pace.
Presence and Listening
I work hard to offer a deep and dynamic presence in our sessions. I don’t simply follow a script—I respond to what I hear and feel in the moment. When appropriate, I’ll reflect back patterns, celebrate milestones, or share parts of my story to foster connection. I aim to be an actual human with you, not just a facilitator or practitioner. Many clients have told me they feel deeply heard, sometimes for the first time in their lives. I take that sacred trust seriously.
Self-Care and Personal Healing Work
As a coach, I believe I can only show up well for others when I am tending to my own healing and wellbeing. I take active responsibility for my self-care—not only to sustain my own health or prevent burnout, but as an ethical commitment to my clients. Maintaining a consistent, grounded presence requires ongoing inner work. At times, this looks like working with my own therapist, coach, or other support professionals. At other times, it may mean setting limits on my availability so I can show up with integrity and clarity. This is part of how I ensure that the space I hold for others is steady, calm, attuned, and truly helpful.
Coaching vs. Therapy
While my work is trauma-informed, I am not a therapist. There are clear legal and ethical boundaries around what I offer: I do not diagnose or treat mental illness, and I cannot provide crisis support. I also do not collect or store protected health information as defined by HIPAA, PIPEDA, PHIPA, or similar laws—though I do follow best practices around privacy and confidentiality.
These boundaries are important, and when done right, coaching helps fill gaps in the mental healthcare landscape by providing a flexible, collaborative, and strengths-based space for growth. Unlike licensed care professionals, coaches can work with clients across geographic regions.
Coaches can also partner in complementary ways with other care providers and teams. Many of my clients come to coaching after completing a phase of therapy and finding themselves in a new chapter of more practically oriented growth. Others seek support in specific areas—e.g., creativity, faith, or personal development—that haven’t been sufficiently addressed through traditional therapy. Still others are currently working with a therapist or care team, and use coaching to help integrate and implement the recommendations of other helping professionals.
Because coaching does not operate through diagnostic codes or clinical labels, we’re not bound by a pathology-based model.
We’re free to begin with your strengths—what’s already working—and build from there. The focus is less on “fixing what’s wrong” and more on deepening your capacity, insight, and creative momentum.
In my practice, I never ask for a “trauma inventory.” You don’t need to retell or relive your entire history in order to grow. In fact, some of the most meaningful change happens when we work in the present—anchored in who you are now and where you want to go—without revisiting every detail of your past.
Of course, your story matters. When elements of your past do arise, we explore them with compassionate curiosity, but always in service of your current goals, not as an end in themselves.
Coaching is a space where your strengths, values, and desired transformations guide the process. It’s a present-oriented, future-facing partnership that honours where you’ve been while helping you move forward with clarity, agency, and creativity.
Post-Traumatic Growth: What It Is (and Isn’t)
Post-traumatic growth isn’t about turning lemons into lemonade. It’s about reclaiming the desire and capacity to grow, after your nervous system and life have been deeply shaken.
In my coaching practice, post-traumatic growth refers to the phase of healing when you’re no longer simply surviving, but beginning to imagine what your life could become. It might mean reconnecting with long-abandoned dreams, forming new relationships with faith or creativity, or simply learning to trust or challenge yourself again.
Importantly, post-traumatic growth is not a performance. It has no timeline, and no one-size-fits-all look. You get to define what growth means for you. My role is to support that process, not dictate it.
A Sacred, Boundaried Relationship
The coaching relationship is intimate in its own way. We talk about things that matter. We laugh (often). We make connections between pain and purpose, habit and healing. I bring warmth, curiosity, and a good deal of humour into my work—because laughter, too, is a trauma response, and sometimes a healing one.
That said, I also hold strong boundaries. I’m not your therapist, spiritual director, or best friend. As important as those kinds of relationships can be in our lives, what makes coaching uniquely powerful is its focus on growth, containment, and accountability. We have a shared goal and we’re working toward it together.
What I Hope You Leave With
More than anything, I hope you leave our work together with spaciousness—the ability to see your life with more openness, creativity, and self-trust. I hope you walk away with tools, language, and practices that help you keep growing long after our sessions end. I hope you feel more integrated—not fixed, but connected to more of who you are and the world around you. Finally, I hope you leave with hope, even if that hope is quiet or small at first.
You deserve to live with freedom. You deserve to reconnect with your voice, your vision, and your body. And you deserve support that honours your history without being defined by it.
That’s what I aim to offer as a coach. If this resonates with you, I’d be honoured to walk with you.
Last updated: June 2025