🍁 Finding Your Way
Post-Traumatic Growth & Resilience Coaching for Women
Together, we create a safe-enough space — where your nervous system can begin to settle and soften.
In these uncertain times, many of us are carrying a lot. When we have experienced trauma — or are in a season of post-traumatic growth — the nervous system can feel especially tender.
You may find yourself feeling on edge, overwhelmed, or sensitive in ways that have been lingering for a long while.
This is where Finding Your Way can meet you — offering a path toward feeling safety in the present moment.
I have learned that safety begins with our nervous system. When it is soothed, settled, and regulated, there is more space to reconnect with a solid, grounded sense of self — like feeling the steady, solid ground of the earth beneath your feet.
Through my own healing journey, I discovered how blending mindful awareness with healing science could impact healing and growth. Understanding how our brain and nervous system work opened space for big shifts and gave me tools to calm and settle my nervous system — like building a muscle. With practice, I gradually could sit with waves of sadness, fear, and other emotions in a way that felt more available, with more ease, and less overwhelm.
From this healing came Finding Your Way: a space for women to experience the healing combination of mindfulness, science, and compassionate connection. I tenderly think of this blending as medicine for the nervous system.
💛 Together, we gently tend to the wounded places, gently noticing your strength and moments of courage, making room to softly reconnect with yourself, your resilience, and your wholeness.
In this video, I share my trauma recovery, guided by the combination of mindful awareness and healing science. 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. 🐢💛
What a session may include:
Together, we create a safe-enough space to resource yourself — gently nurturing your capacity to be with whatever is here, and space to be quiet and still. A space to reconnect with yourself, and to be 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. Once you're on the page, you can read more about the Inquiry Call and decide if it feels like the right next step for you.
Accessibility matters to me.
I hold a small number of sliding-scale openings at any time, and I'm happy to explore options if finances are a concern.
If you're not ready to connect, you're welcome to explore the resources here at your own pace.
The Resource Library
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.
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 resilience, nervous system regulation, 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.
The gift of healing trauma is that the woundedness becomes a gateway to freedom, healing and love.”
— Tara Brach
Art by, Vicky Alvarez