Meet Deni

Hi Everyone! 

 I live in the country with my husband, 2 dogs and 2 cats. I love the peacefulness of the country: it's grounding for me. We have 2 children, both are grown and following their own paths.

     I've been coaching for 20+ years. I started coaching when I lost my favorite job of all time and though I had my husband supporting me, the loss was tough and I felt alone and misunderstood. When I said I wanted to be a Transition Coach, people looked at me like I had 3 eyes and these were some of the comments that I heard: 'Why do you want to do that?', 'Nobody needs or wants that', 'That's silly. You won't make any money doing that', etc. So instead of focusing on transition and loss, I became a generalist: a Life Coach. 

     My dad passed away in 1997 and I had a hard time with it. I didn't get to grieve. I lived in a world where grief wasn't understood: the thing to do was to 'get on with your life', 'be strong'; don't cry', keep it inside and when you're by yourself you can do 'what you need to do'. Sound familiar? How do you be by yourself 'to do what you need to do' when you're working full time, raising a family, on the school board and the president of a booster's club? Eventually, I felt like I had processed most of it.

     In 2019 I was looking for what was next for me with my coaching so I registered into a grief coaching course. THAT course was where I realized I hadn't processed my Dad's passing at all. In fact, I couldn't even say that he had died. I had to use 'passed away' as the term for his death. The memories that I had of us were not happy memories. All I could see were the childish ways I had treated him, my selfishness, etc. I processed my Dad's death during that course and when the course was finished, I found that I had some really great memories of him and things we had done together. He taught me how to ride a bicycle! How could I forget that? He also taught me how to drive! We had some really good times together. :) 

     As part of my journey to find what was next, I also looked at my clients, what they wanted from me and what they received. I found that what I was actually helping them with was making changes, going through transitions. My clients had accomplished life long dreams, organized their home, gave away boxes of clutter and bags and bags of clothes, they had lost loved ones. We had walked the journey of grief and mourning together and they had come out smiling on the other side. Whether the change or loss was death or non-death related, people wanted support in processing their loss and moving forward. 

     I watched my daughter watch her mother-in-law wither away to nothing. After years of sharing caregiving with her husband and watching his mother gradually die, I could see the toll that process took on people. At that time, there was very little support offered to the public. There wasn't a support structure they could lean on - they were it. There was no place to go, no place to turn to, to talk to anyone about what they were going through.

     One of my clients was a wonderful woman who moved from California to Wisconsin. Her niece helped her moved so she could be closer to family. This woman had visited 83 countries in her life time, she had been a leader in her community for years, and, she was in the throes of dementia. This process included going through everything in her house, making decisions about every little thing in the house, what was going with her (very little), what would be donated and what would be thrown away. It was a very difficult change for her. 

     My mother passed away last fall, the day after her 97th birthday. She had dementia and we were lucky - the very worst part(s) lasted about a year. Many times, it lasts many years. I have worked with people that have lost loved ones to degenerative disorders. I think this is a different kind of loss and grief. Watching a loved one lose their coordination, their thinking processes, their memory, is very difficult. The journey can be long and taxing. 

     I have been coaching since 1999 and have come full circle from where I started. I am a Transition Coach and empower individuals and families through life's major changes, particularly those that have loved ones suffering from a degenerative disorder.

     In my 20+ years of coaching, I have travelled my client's journeys with them through their worst times and their best. They have developed new lives for themselves and accomplished things they thought weren't possible. I am proud of each of them for what they have accomplished and continue to accomplish.

     I bring peace, calm and clarity. This is who I am for my clients.