🍁 Finding Your Way
Post-Traumatic Growth & Resilience Coaching for Women
During these uncertain and difficult times in our world, many of us are carrying so much.
For those who have experienced trauma — or who are living in a season of post-traumatic growth — our nervous systems may be especially tender. We may find ourselves carrying the weight of uncertainty, feeling on edge or overly sensitive to our surroundings, with this state having been present for a long while.
Together, we create a safe-enough space to resource yourself — gently nurturing your capacity to be with whatever is here, to be quiet and still, and softly knowing you are not alone. A space to reconnect with your wholeness, and feel seen with kindness and caring, as you find your way.
Sessions are grounded in trauma-informed mindfulness and healing science — including Interpersonal Neurobiology and Polyvagal Theory — which compassionately invite us to “befriend the nervous system.” Our work is shaped around what feels most important for you, at your pace, in your time.
If you are interested in learning more, you’re warmly invited to email me or schedule a free Inquiry Call.
Accessibility matters to me.
I hold a small number of sliding-scale openings at any given time.
If financial considerations are part of your decision-making, you’re welcome to email me to see what options are available.
If you’re not ready for a conversation, you’re also warmly invited to explore the resources and teachings on this site — at your own pace, in your own time.
My work weaves trauma-informed mindful awareness practice and healing science — including Interpersonal Neurobiology and Polyvagal Theory — which compassionately invite us to “befriend our nervous system.” You’re warmly invited to visit these teachings in the Resource Library.
In this video, I share my journey of healing, guided by the combination of mindful awareness and healing science. I tenderly think of this blending as medicine for the nervous system. While the introduction session I mention is no longer available, I invite you to connect with me for a one-on-one session, where we can explore how this approach can support you on your path. 🐢💛
Community can help hold what’s difficult to carry alone.
Healing often unfolds in connection.
As Rachel Naomi Remen reminds us, “We are all healers of each other. The reality is that healing happens between people.”
If you’re curious to learn more, you’re warmly invited to email me or schedule a free Inquiry Call.
Why This Path Matters
“Esther’s class was both powerful and calming. I appreciated the way she weaves mindfulness with an understanding of the brain and nervous system. Her gentle vagal toning practice offered a meaningful ‘aha’ moment that supported my own healing.” — Sasha
This path integrates mindfulness with the science of healing—drawing on Interpersonal Neurobiology and Polyvagal Theory, which invite us to gently “befriend the nervous system.” Mindful awareness serves as a guide: softly learning to be present with whatever arises, without the need to change it. This approach is held through a trauma-informed lens, which softly grounds you as you find your way toward feeling safe. It invites you to notice your feelings, sensations, and the state of your nervous system—at your own pace and in your own time.
Mindfulness and the healing sciences offer gentle practices and grounded understanding that support the nervous system’s natural movement toward safety, connection, and ease. Healing isn’t about fixing ourselves—it’s about restoring and reconnecting with who we already are.
Through my own trauma recovery, I learned how powerful it can be to hold mindful awareness together with an understanding of how the nervous system works. When these are woven together, they offer support that is soothing, regulating, and steadying — allowing healing to unfold at its own pace. I often think of this as medicine for the nervous system.
As we begin to feel safe-enough, the body softens. The mind quiets. And the whole system — brain, heart, breath, gut, and nervous system — can gently shift into states that support healing and growth.
“Mindfulness is simply being aware of what is happening right now without wishing it were different; enjoying the pleasant without holding on when it changes (which it will); being with the unpleasant without fearing it will always be this way (which it won’t).”
—James Baraz
You may be noticing:
Feeling both anxious and quietly hopeful about what’s next
Waves of overwhelm, or a sense that the world doesn’t always feel safe
Uncertainty about where — or how — to begin
Feeling unsettled by small, everyday situations
Longing to feel more at ease in your body and in your connections
If any of this resonates, you’re not alone. I’ve felt this way too — and these are common, shared human experiences. Trauma can shape the nervous system to react quickly as a way of protecting us. These instinctual responses are rooted in survival — even when they pull us away from ease, choice, or connection.
Gently noticing these protective reactions, and slowly shifting toward responding with more awareness in the present moment — in small ways, and at your own pace — can support healing and well-being. As something that feels tangled begins to open, space softens — making room for it to be seen differently, or in a new way.
If you’d like to explore the science and mindfulness practices that support nervous system regulation, resilience, and well-being, you’re warmly welcome to visit the Resource Library.
A Window Into My Story
“Mindfulness is about being fully awake in our lives. It is about perceiving the exquisite vividness of each moment. We feel more alive.
We also gain immediate access to our own powerful inner resources for insight, transformation and healing.”
– Jon Kabat Zinn
A Glimpse Into My Story
From my own trauma recovery, I learned how mindfully soothing and regulating the nervous system creates space — space to feel what we are feeling as it arises, and to become aware of it with kindness.
In that space, agency begins to return. Calm and curiosity become possible. And from there, happiness, purpose, and a sense of fulfillment can slowly re-emerge.
More than 35 years ago, a mindfulness workshop with Jon Kabat-Zinn shifted the course of my life. Over time, I deepened my practice, studying mindfulness, Jewish contemplative traditions, and trauma-informed healing science. These teachings supported my return to myself — to my strengths, my innate wholeness, and capacity for connection.
My journey has also carried me through waves of grief, fear, shame, illness, and early experiences of disconnection. To embrace the words of Tara Brach the woundedness gradually became my gateway to freedom, healing and love. Within those experiences, I reclaimed the seeds of resilience — compassion, courage, and a deep capacity for connection — qualities that are my inherent goodness and wholeness, even when they were clouded by trauma.
For the last several decades, I have continued to study and practice healing approaches that support this process — healing sciences that help us reconnect with ourselves and with our inherent goodness and wholeness.
Today, I walk alongside women navigating life transitions, loss, or trauma, supporting them as they gently rediscover their resilience and find their way.
Perhaps this is a time of transition for you, and you may be wondering how to move forward with clarity and self-compassion. Together, we explore mindfulness, somatic practices, and trauma-informed science, softly supporting your reconnection with yourself — at your own pace, in your own time.
Art by, Vicky Alvarez