For those of you who, understandably, want to know more before launching into work with me – here’s the unabridged version:

 One of my guiding intentions for my work is to be one of the greatest coaches in the world for the greatest, soulful performers in the world.  To be a world class coach for world class leaders, artists, teachers, visionaries, change agents.  

To be the go-to coach for those with an “impossible dream” and a deep hunger to evolve into the greatest expression of themselves, in mind, body, and spirit, in this lifetime.  

This has been a dream that has been a lifetime in the making and discerning, but one clear turning point occurred twelve years ago.

Twelve years ago, I had what seemed to be an impossible dream.

Twelve years ago, I wish I would’ve had a me. Today I have become both the person I’d wish I’d had in my life at that time and the person that I wanted so deeply to become.

Twelve years ago, I graduated from law school with a real J.D. but I didn’t feel like a real lawyer.  I had my education and a potent blend of intelligence, compassion, a hard work ethic and interpersonal skills that I knew I could use to build a successful career in private practice or public service.  I had the confidence and support of respected mentors, beloved family and friends who believed I would be a great success – maybe even a senator, diplomat, or judge someday!  I had everything you’d think a young woman could possibly need for a bright and successful future.  

I had all of these things, some of which came more naturally to me, others I’d worked years to cultivate and invested so much of my personal and financial resources to achieve.  Nearly all of it was made possible through the direct support of family, teachers, and community and also the indirect, trailblazing efforts of women and men before me.  I was grateful for all of this.  

At the same time, there was this nagging something inside of me that just wouldn’t go away.  And I’d tried, for years, to make it go away.  This faint but unceasing whisper was such an inconvenient wrench in my plans and so I’d tried to bulldoze it over with my intellect, my reasoning, my responsibility, and my willpower.  The more I proved to myself and the world how capable, how competent I was at being a “success,” the stronger the voice became.  The hardest I tried to cover it over was when I began to suspect that this wasn’t “just my imagination” or “a crazy pie-in-the-sky pipe-dream.”  I could no longer deny that it felt more like the truth of who I was than anything I’d ever been told I was, wanted to believe I was so that I would be accepted by the outside world, or that the things I was good at- my success and achievements- seemed to affirm that I was.  It was a deep knowing.  It was the truth speaking.  My truth.

Here is what it said…

That I was really an artist, a writer, poet, a healing-teaching-and-creative-force-of-nature-type-thing that I didn’t even have a label for…but I still felt this deep knowing.  It was the kind of knowing for which I had no reason for knowing; I certainly had nothing to show externally to prove I was this kind of person aside from some sketchbooks I’d loved to draw in as a child, winning the poster contest for fire safety week in third grade, and a pretty bad short story I’d written in undergrad for an English class.  

I could see the security and certain definition of success that following a traditional path of being an attorney would provide and I had plenty of validation from others that I would be good at this and also lots of advice from others that this would be the best use of my life, not to mention the enormous resources and energy I’d invested in getting this far and being this educated and equipped.

But I couldn’t ignore the great void I’d felt in law school.  How, even when I was doing well and receiving praise for my work, that I still felt empty and even that I was being underutilized.  Like I was playing a game that I didn’t really want to play and doing so with my strong hand tied behind my back.   

I also couldn’t ignore, even though it was the faintest of whispers, the voice inside of me that spoke to me of who I really was and who I might become. The voice had no external authority I could cite to back it up.  It came solely from within me.  I began to realize that it’s very credibility was that it didn’t come from an external authority but came from a place deep within myself.   

I couldn’t ignore that I was nearly certain that if I stayed the course as a lawyer that I would wake up at 40, arrive at my office, maybe even as a partner in the firm, maybe even doing good work for good people, and I would still be wondering, “what if?”  I’d still wonder what paintings I could’ve made, what books and poems and essays I could’ve written, what lives I could’ve touched, what adventure I could have had, what meaning I could’ve created, and, because of all of this journey, who I would have been required to become? 

What if…what if there was more to life than being a successful, respected attorney?

What if…

I was also 99% certain that I’d never wonder “what if” if I decided to leave the legal track. 

I was only 1% off about that.

Fast forward twelve years and through many triumphs, failures, dark nights of the soul, bold, beautiful dreams unfolding, and giving birth to and raising three breathtakingly amazing children.  Fast forward from setting up a makeshift art studio in our grad housing basement/garage with supplies I inherited from my grandmother and having everyone look on at my clumsy work and thinking I’d gone off my rocker to think I was an artist…to finding my voice, and losing it, and finding it again, and making paintings and selling paintings for a few thousand dollars and then some for several thousands of dollars…to coaching other artists, entrepreneurs and leaders who are the best of the best at what they do, not to only be better at what they do, but to be LIBERATED, both in terms of having the financial success and freedom they desire but also in terms of truly making their art and creating their lives on terms that are deeply satisfying and authentic to their creative spirits…

fast forward through all that and I can tell you that even when no one like my art (other than my mom), even when no one bought my art, even when people thought being a life coach was flakey or snake oil salesmany, even when I’d gone into debt and struggled to pay my law school loan, not to mention the tuition for my trainings as a coach and for the bills from Dick Blick to buy the art supplies to make the art no one liked….

even through all that, I never wondered, “what if I’d stayed a lawyer.”

Because I knew it wasn’t mine to be.  And what I’m doing now, heartbreak, failure, breakthroughs, blazing successes and all, is so truly, deeply mine.   

Let’s back up a little bit, though…

I grew up on a farm with a huge imagination and dreams as great and wild as the vast land and skyscapes of my beloved Iowa. I believe deeply that the land of my childhood is sacred ground and that it and the infinite seeming sky and unencumbered horizons very much shaped the inner terrain of my imagination. Connected to the world in this way, I truly believed that I could do anything and be whatever I wanted to be. As I got older, I began to lose this. In the communities I call home and in countless others like it, I witnessed too many women’s understanding of who they really are and the power they hold erode from the many demands life placed upon them and this generalized sense that we, in “flyover” country, were not as entitled to dream the big dreams as people living elsewhere. Who were we to dream impossible dreams? I witnessed too many women put their dreams on hold for a someday that never came. This broke my heart and I vowed to change it in my life and then share everything I learned with any other woman who came to me with her big, impossible dream.

I am fiercely passionate about helping women in places like sacred farm-country Iowa where I was raised. I watched as too often the claiming of potential and dreams were put on the back burner to save for later.  Too often it just seemed like the spark went out and nothing was done about the dream, there was no need to call forth and cultivate sleeping potential, and nothing much changed.

Life went on and everything was “fine.” 

But I’ve come to believe that beneath every woman’s “fine” are worlds and worlds of ideas, dreams, and a soul deprived the light of day and gone blue from lack of oxygen.

Buried beneath the mountain of “fine” are our dreams and therefore, buried beneath fine is a wealth of untapped resources and energy that could flow into the healing and strengthening of individual lives, communities, and the planet.  

I believe there is so much more for women.  

I believe in a life beyond fine.

I believe that sometimes, often times, our real life lies even beyond what we thought would be a dream come true…

I wanted that MORE for myself, that feeling of being FULLY ALIVE and deeply connected to my essential being.  I wanted to live with my soul forward, robust and shining in the world.  I believed that was possible for myself, and I created it.

I want that for my clients, I believe in that for my clients, and together we work to create that.

And I want that for so, so many more women as well.  

As women we often place our hope and devote the best of our energies to the next generation, whether they be our children or the children of others.  This is good, noble and important work.  But I believe deeply that what we do not heal and create in and for ourselves in our own life will become the legacy that our children and the next generation of our people inherit.  Too often when we defer our hope to future generations, we are also deferring our pain and our wounds.  

I believe that no matter where you live and no matter the external resources currently at hand, that your present circumstance is not your destiny.  It does not have to define you, your future, or the legacy you leave for the next generation.   I also believe that when women work together, what is created is a force to be reckoned with and that we will be more powerful and go farther when we do this work together.  

The investment my private clients make in their dreams and their future when they work with me helps me bring this transformational coaching work to women everywhere. We are going to break this generational cycle, together.

Sometimes it can be overwhelming to know where to begin, but may I offer the following as a first step.  Whether you are interested in my private coaching and/or you want me to come to your community to work with a group of women there, I would love to hear from you.  

Often times the most powerful first step is a conversation with a compassionate and trusted witness that’s needed to bring a spark back to life or have a spark roar into a flame.  So often I hear from the women I work with, who are now living their dreams, that from the moment they made the decision to call or write to me, that that’s the moment when they first began to feel things really shift and change.  

I look forward to hearing from you.

To your dreams, with love,

Leah