Wayfinder Coaching
What is coaching?
Coaching is structured, one-on-one work on something you want to change.
You bring the issue; a decision you keep circling, a life that stopped fitting, a body that changed and took your plans with it. We look at it together. I ask questions. We find what's actually in the way, rather than what you've been told is in the way. You leave with something to try.
It is not advice. I don't tell you what to do with your life, because I don't know, and neither does anyone else who isn't you.
The method I trained in is called Wayfinding, and the name is literal. It refers to the Polynesian navigators who crossed thousands of miles of open ocean without charts or instruments, reading swells, stars, birds, and wind. They were reading information that was always there, using senses most of us have stopped trusting.
That's the premise of this work. Most people already know, at some level, what they want and what they can't keep doing. What's usually missing is permission, structure, and someone to think out loud with. This method of coaching is a facilitation of uncovering/discovering/recovering the answers that are already within you.
Two selves, and why you're tired
The framework I work from distinguishes between two parts of a person.
One is the self that formed in response to everyone else; family, work, culture, church, the diagnosis, the expectations you absorbed before you were old enough to consent to them. It speaks in should and have to. It's the part that keeps the peace and answers the email and doesn't make a fuss. It kept you safe and employed and loved. But it doesn't actually know what you want, because wanting was never its job.
The other is the self that was there first. The one with preferences, aversions, and a startlingly clear sense of what's a yes and what's a no, if you can get quiet enough to hear it.
Most of the exhaustion people bring to coaching isn't from doing too much. It's from doing too much of what isn't theirs.
Much of this work is learning to tell the two apart. It's less mystical than it sounds. Your body is usually the one telling the truth first. I teach you how to listen.
Who this tends to help
You're living with a chronic or autoimmune condition and the medical part is handled, more or less, but the rest of your life hasn't caught up. Work, relationships, identity, what you say yes to.
You're in the middle of a change - a job, a diagnosis, an ending, a move, an empty house and you're doing fine on paper.
You're the one who takes care of everyone. Nurse, parent, caregiver, oldest daughter. Competent and depleted, and you can't remember the last time anyone asked what you wanted.
Your life is built entirely out of ‘shoulds’ and you've stopped being able to tell which parts you'd keep.
Nothing is wrong, exactly. You've fixed the fixable things and there's still a low hum of this isn't it.
You have a decision to make and you've been researching it for eight months instead of making it.
You don't need a crisis to qualify. Coaching is for people who want their life to be more theirs.
What coaching is not
Coaching is not psychotherapy, mental health treatment, medical care, or nursing care. In coaching I do not diagnose, treat, prescribe, or manage any medical or psychological condition, including when the topic we're working on is your health. That's true even though I'm a licensed acupuncturist and a registered nurse. Those are different roles, and coaching isn't one of them.
The clearest way I've heard the distinction put: therapy is designed to restore function; coaching is designed to enhance it. Coaching assumes you're basically standing, and works on where you're headed. Therapy helps heal where you might be wounded from the past and goes there.
So, if what's in the way is unhealed trauma, a mental health condition, or real difficulty getting through your days, coaching is the wrong tool; there's better help available and you deserve it. If that becomes clear in our work, I'll say so and help you find your way there. Some people do both; they work on different things and run well alongside each other.
Coaching is a non-clinical service and is not billable to health insurance.
Coaching and acupuncture
Coaching is offered through Eventide, but it is its own service.
You do not have to be an acupuncture patient to work with me as a coach, and current patients are under no obligation to add coaching to their care. If you do both, they stay distinct: separate sessions, separate agreements, separate records. Nothing from your coaching work goes into your clinical chart, and coaching sessions aren't treatment visits.
Some people find the two work well side by side. Some people only ever want one. Both are fine.
About your coach
I'm Angelique. I spent more than twenty years as a registered nurse in oncology, hospice, and later mental health before becoming an acupuncturist. Which is to say I've spent a long career sitting with people at the moments their lives changed whether they were ready or not, and I've watched what actually helps.
Mostly it isn't advice. It's someone steady in the room who isn't afraid of what you're about to say.
I'm completing life coach training through Martha Beck Inc.'s Wayfinder Life Coach Training program, an ICF Level 2 accredited program. That's where the structure of this work comes from. The rest of it comes from those twenty years of listening.
I'm soft-spoken, and people tend to settle in my company. I'm also direct. I'll ask you powerful and sometimes difficult questions; the kind that help you think around the corners of whatever you bring to our sessions to help you find your own North Star.
I am currently working toward certification in Wayfinder Lifecoach Training!
What this means:
I am looking for 2-3 clients to coach pro bono (no charge!) as part of gathering hours for certification. Reach out as soon as possible if you are interested!
Beyond the pro bono offering, I will offering coaching at a significantly reduced rate (“certification track rate”) until I complete certification. See below for details.
How It Works
Discovery Call- 30 min
Before any commitment, we talk for 30 minutes, no charge, by phone or video.
It's a conversation with two purposes: you get a feel for how I work and what it's like to be asked questions by me, and I get enough of a picture to tell you honestly whether coaching is the right tool for what you're carrying.
You don't need to arrive prepared or be able to articulate the problem cleanly. "Something isn't right and I can't name it" is a perfectly good place to start - a lot people begin there!
Expect me to ask what brought you here, what you've already tried, and what you'd want to be different. Expect to ask me anything you want about the process, the cost, or my background. At the end I'll tell you plainly whether I think I can help. Sometimes the answer is that a therapist or another kind of practitioner is the better fit, and if so I'll say so and point you toward it.
There's no pressure to decide on the call. Take whatever time you need to consider the decision.
Current offerings
Single session - $175
Certification-track rate - $85 - half my standard rate while I complete certification. If you start with me during this period, this rate is held for you until twelve months after I certify.
Pro bono sessions - a small number of no-cost spots, these spots are first come, first served and offered for a limited time.
Most coaching relationships run somewhere between three and six months; often six to twelve sessions, weekly or every other week. Work focused on a single decision can be shorter, sometimes three or four. Longer stretches of change sometimes ask for more.
What tends to happen in that time: clarity comes first. Most people get a clearer sense of what they actually want within the first several sessions. The slower changes (resilience, a settled sense of direction) build over months rather than weeks.
That's the general shape. Yours may look different, and we'll talk honestly about it as we go.
What I can tell you is that change rarely happens in one conversation, and that most people find the work starts to compound somewhere around the third or fourth session. We'll decide together as we go, and you're free to stop whenever you've gotten what you came for.
If the first session isn't right for you, tell me and I'll refund it in full. No explanation needed.
Scheduling is up to you. Some people come weekly, some every other week, some monthly during a long stretch of change. We'll find a rhythm that suits what you're working on.
Between sessions, you'll usually have something small to practice, notice, or try. Most of the useful information shows up out in your actual life, not in my office.
A coaching agreement is signed before the first session, covering scope, fees, cancellation, and records. Cancellations and reschedules need 24 hours' notice.
Let’s Work Together
If you're interested in working with us, complete the form with a few details about your project. We'll review your message and get back to you within 48 hours.