Healing Work is Calling
When our purposeful work in the world finally becomes clear to us, the steps we take toward it must be intentional.
Coming from a branding and marketing background, I recently encountered a direct opposition to what I’ve been taught about positioning. It’s always been about niche specialization and how best to message that to the “ideal customer profile (ICP).” I think that paradigm is dying, though.
Even writing this out creates an unpleasant tension in my gut because ICPs extract humanity and relationality from the equation. Hear me out.
For the last five years, I thought my greatest purpose was to empower leaders through coaching, keynotes, and workshop facilitation. I’ve been holding space for CEOs, executive directors, and entrepreneurs to tap into their innate power and contributory gifts within their leadership roles. While I’ll continue to coach, I have also recently accepted the call to take my work deeper—as a sacred trauma healing practitioner for individuals.
What is Sacred Trauma Healing?
Instead of focusing on one particular modality, I’ve been using what’s in my tool belt as a base: trauma-informed coaching, Reiki, cuddle therapy (yes, therapeutic cuddling), and an unwavering trust in my intuitive skills.
Combine those with some holistic tools that have appeared on my path or that I’ve recently been curious about—aromatherapy, traditional bian stone fire cupping, cord cutting, plant sweeping, wild turkey feather fans, sound healing, and lapidary medicine—and it becomes more about a client’s trust in us (me and them) than what might be utilized in a given session.
The components of my evolving practice include conscious communication, energy healing, physical connection, olfaction, detoxification, detachment, plant teachers, sound wave frequency and more. While these may not make sense to many people in the analytical realm, what I create is a container that allows for the integration of trauma or the release of deep stagnation from the auric body, or human energy field (HEF).
For context, the entirety of this field (as we know it right now) includes the physical body (etheric, emotional and mental bodies), the astral body, and the spiritual body (the etheric template and celestial and causal bodies).
As a practitioner, I’m most excited about the trajectory of this one-on-one healing work because I see how well clients respond. A session can include a wide spectrum of emotional release, vocalization, visions or the surfacing of latent memories, communing with one’s inner child, profound realizations or epiphanies, a palpable feeling of lightness, and more. Over time, transformation occurs—and we both know that all of this deep work is being done by them; I’m simply facilitating a remembering of the true self.
How to Find Clarity
I imagine that clarity of one’s life direction arrives in different ways and timelines for each of us. For me, discovering purpose was an unfolding process. While I followed the things that seemed to flow with ease, deep listening helped me to know when it was time to move on and continue to evolve.
After I sold my cause marketing agency in 2016, I defaulted to consulting for other agencies and large organizations like Meta (Facebook) and NASA. Luckily, it didn’t take long to realize that coaching was much more aligned with my desire to go deeper than search engine optimization, employee utilization and P&Ls.
There was a period of time where I offered a hybrid of coaching and consulting, but that waffling ultimately led me to become certified as trauma-informed leadership coach. That’s when things really got interesting because it became so clear—in my body—that I was edging closer to my purpose.
Over time and with practice, I learned to trust myself and physical sensations when things felt aligned—regardless of how my work was perceived by others. For example, my decision to work with trauma made some people very uncomfortable, which had everything to do with their own avoidance of shame, guilt, fear, and so on. It had nothing to do with me, and a large part of clarity includes a steadfast knowing that isn’t swayed by external reactions.
This most recent evolution, from trauma-informed coaching to sacred trauma healing, isn’t even a leap. It feels like an extension or building upon a foundation that’s only been strengthened by lived experience and expertise.
Who Do I Work With Now?
My coaching practice is for those emerging or established leaders who have a sense that their past may be getting in the way of their present. They desire a different future and are committed to doing deep, brave work together for a year or more. I no longer work short-term or with leadership teams in conflict because mediation is not how my gifts are best leveraged.
My group coaching program, Healing Leaders Circle, starts in late January 2025. It’s a first-of-its-kind group for those doing healing work in the world—anything that’s categorized as or adjacent to DEI, trauma-informed care, social change, gender-affirming or reproductive health advocacy, climate/land justice, bodywork, or energy work. (There are a couple of spots left if this seems interesting to you.)
For sacred trauma healing, I work in-person with openminded individuals who have experienced trauma in childhood or as adults and are looking for an approach that is guided by what they need—not what a specific mainstream modality might offer. These are also typically long-term relationships, with 90-minute sessions once or twice per month. I work primarily in the New York City metro area, and in some cases I will travel to clients in other states.
I’ll also be leading trauma healing retreats starting in April 2025. More on that in a future post.
Overall, you can see now how it would be difficult to brand these practices into a singular, search-friendly phrase. Plus, it’s antithetical to the approach. Those who are magnetized to my words, my energy, and my heart will reach out and be referred by others who love them. It’s no longer about retrofitting my value; it’s about showing up unapologetically in my wisdom and solidity—with the capacity to hold anything that needs to be held, moved, or transmuted.
What’s the Bigger Picture Here?
Healing work is calling now because that’s what is needed now. As a species, we’ve been led to feel disconnected from ourselves, our community, and from nature. This disconnection-by-design has perpetuated individualism—the opposite of oneness, or interconnectedness. When we forget that we are not separate, it’s easy to judge, hate, and otherwise disregard all forms of life. In that context, unintegrated trauma is the root of white nationalism, genocide, and climate change, among so many other manifestations of suffering. There is so much healing to do.
I wrote a whole book about it for leaders. The not-so-subtle shift is that I’m putting it into the world as a healing practitioner. Every step of the journey from here forward is nothing less than intentional and in full integrity; those are non-negotiable. And, as I begin the second half of my life, that feels like quiet power.
I revere each client as the subject matter expert of his/her/their own life; they know what they need to heal and how—even if only subconsciously. That’s especially important when emotions like anger and rage have been ostracized for far too long. We collaborate as partners in a judgment-free space where whatever emerges is not only welcomed to the house, but embraced warmly and lovingly given a seat at the table.
In this way, facilitating another human’s homecoming is how I can love them best. It’s clear to me that I’m here to do just that—to love others so well that they can slowly and truly love themselves.