Hey! I'm Joanna Elizabeth
I'm a certified life coach, but my understanding of major life transitions didn't begin with a coaching certification.
It began with having to rebuild my own life.
There was a season when several things I had counted on changed within a relatively short period of time. My marriage ended. My mother died about a year after the divorce filing, and I later lost my father. I also experienced the loss of my business and home.
I knew how to keep functioning through all of it.
What I had to learn was how to build a life after it.
Rebuilding Didn't Happen All at Once
For me, rebuilding wasn't one big breakthrough.
It happened in smaller moments—learning to sit with myself instead of constantly trying to escape what I was feeling, questioning patterns that no longer served me, making decisions without needing everyone else to agree with them, and slowly learning to trust myself again.
Eventually, something changed.
I wasn't simply getting through the life I had been handed anymore. I felt more peaceful, more grounded, and more certain of myself. Even my former husband eventually commented that I seemed like a different person.
I wasn't a different person. I had learned how to come back to myself.
That experience shapes the way I coach today.
More Than 20 Years of Listening to What Stress Does to the Body
Long before I became a coach, I worked as a licensed massage therapist.
For more than two decades, I sat with people whose bodies were telling stories their words didn't always tell—tight shoulders after weeks of carrying too much, difficulty relaxing even when there was finally permission to stop, and physical tension that returned when life became overwhelming again.
That experience taught me something I still bring into coaching:
Understanding something in your mind doesn't always mean your body has caught up.
You can know you need to set a boundary and still feel your body tense when you say no. You can know a decision is yours to make and still feel anxious after making it. You can know you need rest and still feel guilty when you stop.
That's why, when it's useful, my coaching includes simple body-awareness practices alongside reflection, decision-making, boundaries, and the practical situations you're dealing with in your life.
I don't believe my job is to tell you what your life should look like.
My job is to help you slow down enough to understand what's happening, recognize what you need, hear your own judgment more clearly, and make the decision that's actually yours to make.
Because whether you're rebuilding after divorce, adjusting to a role that has changed, or simply realizing that the way you've been living no longer fits, I believe the goal isn't to become someone completely different.
It's to trust yourself enough to decide who you want to be now.
