Coaching is a cake made out of meaning and purpose. All my life, I wanted to make a difference but it was only through coaching I discovered the true gift of watching someone make a difference in their own lives, while I held the space.

I have natural curiosity about people and their actions, and how all of us are governed knowingly and unknowingly by our past. I’ve often found myself repeating patterns that don’t serve me, particularly after I stopped drinking. Abstinence alone didn’t change my behavior patterns or self-limiting beliefs about guilt and shame. It was retraining neural pathways through self awareness and accountability that turns clean time into recovery time.

I have a genuine compassion and empathy for clients. In the coaching space, nothing is right or wrong, it merely is. A client who arrives defensive and on guard needs heart space, a place where they can speak and be heard. There is no judgement. The client has her/her own answers already, the space is there for them to hear themselves.

To have a client sit on the couch in week 1 telling me how little he wants to be there, and in week 5 tell me his life is the best it has been in years, makes me even more certain and determined that recovery coaching works. Being able to explain and provide information about the wellness continuum, allows the client to be able to use the session for his or her own personal development while taking home information for the family. Thus the confidential contract with the client remains intact, but the benefits are shared.

Recovery coaching is also open to family members. So often the family is so consumed by the behavior of the addict that the members forget there is anything else. This prevents them from seeing life as anything more than something to endure. I work closely with wives, husbands, fathers mothers and sisters and brothers to remind them of how to carry on their own lives in loving detachment, not just surviving but thriving.