Hi, I’m Joy
I coach women who sense they're made for more and are ready to do the personal work of getting there. I sit with women standing at a threshold and help them set down what isn't true, trust themselves, and take the next right step—on purpose. Grounded in faith, rooted in real life, and honored to walk alongside you.
My Journey to Coaching
I'm an only child, raised by two amazing parents in a home where family, faith, and love came first. My childhood was secure and happy. I was raised in the Church, and faith became my core early — it is still the cornerstone of everything I do.
I trained as a nurse, worked in the NICU, then became a neonatal nurse practitioner, and eventually earned my Doctor of Nursing Practice degree.
I was a child when I started in the NICU. The people I met there helped me grow up — into a better nurse, and a better person. It is also a place where life and death are commonplace, and it forced me to make peace with both.
I have three wonderful children, now amazing young adults. I have one precious grandson, with another grandchild on the way. I cared for my mom through vascular dementia, and now I care for my dad — both with the help of my children and some dedicated caregivers. In 2022 I left Illinois, a home I loved, two jobs I loved, and my young adult children, and moved to Florida for him. It cost me. It was the right thing.
In these four years my dad and I have grown close in a way I never expected. The days are mostly mundane. He is deeply dependent on me and wants all of my attention, and some days he yells — not because he doesn't love me, not because I've done anything wrong, but because he is in pain and frustrated and I am the one who is there. It isn't pretty. It's hard. There are mornings I don't want to do it. I learned patience I didn't have. I learned that sacrifice, up close, doesn't feel noble — it feels frustrating and silent. And somewhere in the ordinariness of it, I learned to love in a way I had never known before.
For most of my career I'd believed I wasn't enough. My colleagues seemed smarter, more experienced, more sure of themselves — and next to them I felt second-rate. No one's first choice. It's a strange thing to make life-and-death decisions all day and still walk out of the unit certain if I made a single good decision.
After my mom died in 2019, I got serious about my faith and about taking care of myself, body, mind, and soul. I knew there was more. I just didn't know what, or how.
That's where coaching came in. My coach, Mel Macintyre, taught me to set those old beliefs down, to trust myself, to live in the present moment. She challenged me and encouraged me. I became a better daughter, mother, friend, and nurse practitioner — not because I finally had my life sorted, but because I stopped letting those beliefs hold me back.
In 2020 I learned to SCUBA dive. That one still surprises me. Diving was always something I dreamed about and quietly filed under things for other people — until I was one of those people, and it turned out to be that easy. Underwater is my happy place. There is a beauty and peace there that don't exist on land — the purest glimpse of the sheer majesty of God's creation.
My Catholic faith guides all my personal decisions, but I will never place it in your coaching journey unless you want it there.