She didn’t plan on becoming a coach.
In fact, if you’d asked her five years ago, she would’ve laughed and said,
“I’m a nurse, not a motivational speaker.”
But somewhere between the endless shifts, the growing charting demands, and the feeling that every ounce of compassion was being squeezed out of her—she realized something:
She was great at helping others heal, but she was losing herself in the process.
Her name is Jenna, and like so many nurses, she hit a wall.
Jenna loved her patients. She still does. But she was tired of feeling like she was constantly fixing things that were never going to stay fixed—systems, staffing, people in crisis.
She’d come home emotionally empty, wondering how she could keep showing up for others when she had nothing left for herself.
Then one night, a colleague she’d mentored pulled her aside.
“You always know how to calm me down,” the colleague said. “It’s like you see the part of me I forget is there.”
That sentence stayed with her.
It wasn’t praise—it was a mirror.
Jenna realized that what people valued most in her wasn’t her charting accuracy or her speed. It was her presence. Her ability to listen, reflect, and guide.
That was the night she started asking new questions.
A few months later, Jenna attended a weekend workshop on burnout recovery for healthcare workers. One of the speakers was a nurse-turned-coach who talked about finding joy again by guiding others through transitions and self-leadership.
Something clicked.
It wasn’t about abandoning nursing—it was about expanding it.
She saw that coaching could take everything she loved about healthcare—the empathy, the connection, the healing—and give it space to breathe.
So, she signed up for a coaching certification program. She didn’t know where it would lead, but she knew she had to try.
Fast forward two years: Jenna now runs her own small coaching practice focused on helping other nurses rediscover balance, purpose, and courage.
She still keeps her RN license active, but she works from home three days a week—no more double shifts, no more night calls.
Her clients aren’t patients; they’re peers.
And she says the same thing in nearly every discovery call:
“You don’t have to leave healthcare to heal yourself. You just have to find a new way to practice caring.”
That’s what coaching became for her—a form of care that includes the caregiver.
The biggest shift for Jenna wasn’t logistical—it was internal.
She stopped introducing herself as “just a nurse” and started owning the power of her experience.
Years of navigating complex emotions, difficult families, and life-or-death conversations had given her the ability to meet anyone where they were.
Now she gets paid to do what she once did for free—listen, guide, and help people reconnect with their “why.”
And instead of exhaustion, she feels energized by her work.
She’ll tell you coaching didn’t fix everything overnight.
She still has hard days. She still doubts herself sometimes.
But she’ll also tell you that for the first time in years, she feels like herself.
Here’s what she shares with every new client:
You don’t have to have it all figured out to help others grow.
Your compassion is your superpower—but it needs boundaries.
The moment you stop trying to save everyone, you finally start transforming lives.
When Jenna looks back, she sees that coaching wasn’t a leap into something foreign—it was a natural next step.
She was already coaching every day without realizing it.
She just needed to give herself permission to call it what it was.
And maybe that’s true for you, too.
You don’t have to burn out to break through.
You don’t have to stop caring to start thriving.
You just have to let the possibility in—
that maybe, just maybe, your next chapter has already begun.
Because once you see what’s possible, you’ll never look back either.