How I Found My Way to Nurse Coaching

There are certain moments that divide your life into a clear before and after.

For me, one of those moments came during the birth of my third child. I was at home, surrounded by calm and support, finally trusting my body in a way I never had before. That birth changed how I understood health, safety, and healing, not only for myself but for the people I cared for as a nurse.

But that moment didn’t appear out of nowhere. The path to it had been forming for years.

The Art of Walking Beside

Back in 2020, I left emergency and PACU nursing and began working in hospice and palliative care. The difference between those two worlds was striking.

In acute care, everything moved fast. Care was task-based and protocol-driven, often things being done to patients in the name of keeping up. It wasn’t that people didn’t care; they did. But the system didn’t make much room for pause, presence, or partnership.

Hospice was the opposite. It was slower, quieter, more intentional. For the first time, I saw what it looked like when care truly centered around the person — their values, their goals, their quality of life. The focus shifted from control to connection, from fixing to being with.

It was there that I began to understand the art of walking beside. It’s supporting rather than directing, listening rather than fixing. That change in perspective planted a seed I couldn’t ignore.

A Turning Point in My Own Healing

Motherhood magnified everything I believed about the body’s wisdom and the limits of conventional care.

After two traumatic hospital births that left me with physical and emotional complications, I went into my third pregnancy determined to do things differently. Even when I waited until the very end to go in for my second birth, the moment I stepped into the hospital, the process was taken over. My voice, my instincts, my sense of agency all seemed to dissolve in that environment.

My home birth was entirely different.

It felt peaceful and empowering. I was supported rather than managed. My body led the way. And while birth is always intense, what surprised me most was what came after. I recovered quickly, with almost no pain or complications postpartum. For the first time, I felt truly in charge of my own care, and that sense of safety changed me.

It wasn’t just a positive birth story. It was a moment of deep remembering that healing happens when we feel seen, heard, and in control of our experience.

This moment was captured during my home birth, a reminder of what safety and trust can feel like when care honors the whole person.

Connecting the Dots

Those experiences, hospice and home birth, mirrored each other in ways I didn’t expect.

Both taught me that true healing doesn’t come from a procedure or a pill. It comes from being witnessed, supported, and trusted. It made me wonder: what if care like that weren’t confined to life’s bookends, but part of the everyday journey?

That question led me to explore functional medicine for nurses. I signed up for a three-month course expecting to learn about labs, supplements, and protocols. What I actually discovered was something much deeper: that functional medicine, at its core, is simply good nursing. It is holistic, individualized, and deeply personal.

The Bridge to Coaching

After that, I enrolled in a six-month Nurse Coach training program, and it felt like everything I had learned up to that point suddenly clicked into place.

This training wasn’t about disease states or lab markers. It was about listening, holding space, and helping people uncover the patterns, beliefs, and stressors that shape their health from the inside out.

It gave me the tools to deliver care that is not only informed by science but rooted in human connection. In coaching, we talk about everything from nutrition and sleep to relationships, purpose, and self-trust, because it is all connected.

Coming Full Circle

Now, when I think about what brought me here, I see a thread that runs through it all: the desire to help people feel whole.

Whether it is a client learning to balance blood sugar and feel more energized in their body, or someone finding the courage to realign their career and life with what truly matters, nurse coaching provides the space for transformation.

It is where science meets humanity. It is the kind of care I wish everyone could experience, not only in life’s beginnings and endings, but throughout the journey.

Through Bramble Wellness, that is the work I get to do now.

Because when we look at the person, not just the problem, healing becomes possible.