Journey of the Heart
Women’s Faith-Based Coaching

My own experiences taught me how personal support can be.

Group support can be wonderful. Women can form meaningful relationships with others who understand something about what they are facing.

After stalking and sexual assault, privacy became very important to me. Being able to choose when, where, and with whom I shared deeply personal parts of my life helped me feel safe.

Cancer support groups brought another experience. Women become real to one another. You learn their names, their stories, their families, and you care about what happens to them.

When a woman I had come to care about died, grief and fear could return together.

Those experiences stayed with me. Every woman responds to support in her own way, and understanding begins with listening to what feels right for her.

There were times when several life-changing experiences were happening at once.

Cancer affected how I thought about my body, my future, and survival. Abuse affected trust, confidence, safety, relationships, and the way I saw myself.

They were all part of the same life—mine.

That experience taught me how closely the different parts of a woman's life can be connected. What happens in one part of her life can touch her heart, her faith, her relationships, her confidence, and the way she sees herself.

Counseling was an important part of my own healing and gave me valuable professional guidance during difficult times in my life.

Those experiences also taught me something meaningful about trust and connection.

There were appointments when most of the hour passed before I finally reached what I truly wanted to talk about.

By the time the words came, our time together was nearly finished. That experience stayed with me.

Sometimes trust needs time before a woman reaches what is really in her heart.

Counseling and coaching each have their own professional role. Journey of the Heart was created to stand alongside counseling and offer another meaningful source of professional support.

It brings professional coaching together with the understanding of a woman who has lived through life-changing experiences herself, remembers what those experiences felt like, and cares deeply about the woman sitting across from her.

There were times when fear filled nearly every thought.

Some prayers were only a few words, and I wondered what that said about my faith. I wondered whether a woman with stronger faith would feel less afraid or pray longer.

Looking back years later, something became very clear.

I was still turning to God.

The fear was real, and so was my faith.

Those few words were prayers. Reaching for God was faith.

Jesus' words about faith the size of a mustard seed changed the way I understood those frightened moments.

Fear and faith had existed in the same heart. Seeing that gave me greater grace and compassion for the frightened woman I had been.

As years passed, important landmarks in my life began to look different from where I stood today.

I could see courage in places where I remembered only fear.

I could see faith in moments when fear had made me question whether my faith was strong enough.

Choices made more sense when I remembered what I knew at the time, what I was afraid of, and what I was trying to survive.

The woman I had once judged so harshly began to look very different to me.

For the first time, I could give that woman some of the same understanding, grace, and compassion I would have offered someone else.

That changed the way I understood my past, the way I saw myself in the present, and eventually the way I understood what another woman might discover when she looked back at her own life.

A new perspective also changed the way I understood God's purpose in my own life.

Experiences I once viewed through pain began to reveal growth, courage, faith, compassion, and lessons that became part of the woman I am today.

Gratitude began to grow for what God had taught me and for the ways He had worked through even the hardest parts of my life.

My calling began to make sense.

Professional training gave me knowledge, structure, resources, and responsibility. Lived experience gave me the perspective of having once been the woman searching for understanding myself.

I came to see how much both mattered. Together with advocacy, faith, and years of listening to women, they shaped the coaching I wanted to create.

Journey of the Heart grew from those discoveries.

A woman can return to meaningful landmarks in her life from the perspective she has today and begin seeing things that were hidden by fear, pain, uncertainty, or simply being too close to what was happening at the time.

She may recognize courage where she once remembered fear. Faith that remained present through uncertainty. Strength she once overlooked. Choices she understands differently with everything she has learned since.

That new view can bring greater grace for the woman she was, greater self-compassion for the woman she is today, and greater understanding as she moves forward.

Healing taught me something about living too.

Understanding my past with greater compassion made more room in my heart to enjoy the life I had today.

I could laugh. Create something beautiful. Wear the lipstick. Enjoy dessert. Pray. Rest. Celebrate. Love people. Love God. And feel grateful to be alive.