Half Dome Summit, Yosemite National Park, CA
Hey, I'm Jonelle
Life coach, facilitator, consultant, community organizer
Based in Washington, DC and anywhere online
Based in Washington, DC and anywhere online
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I love to help people build the courage and freedom to find what's true to them and then cheer them on while they go and do it
As one friend put it, "Jonelle helps you explore the why of you" Quick facts
What I value
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Photo credit: Christina Sorensen @apparativ
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If we're not supposed to dance, why all this music?
– Gregory Orr
– Gregory Orr
The longer version
I grew up in a small Wisconsin town of maybe 600 folks. My dad owned a custom homebuilding company. My mom drove the bus I rode to school each day. They worked hard, and they taught my siblings and I the value of effort and a dollar. As a girl, I didn't know where life would take me, but I knew that I wouldn't stay in Wisconsin forever. I wanted to expand. I lived for short times in Philadelphia, Chicago, Seattle, and Maryland before landing where I currently live in DC.
Finding my current way of life took some time, and it is still ever-evolving. In college, I was driven toward a life that would mean something to a lot of other people. I felt pressure to get a "respectable" job, make a "high-enough" salary, move to a "good city," choose the "right person" to be with, and be a "happy person." I noticed the wide gulf between how happy my college peers and I were supposed to be, and how unhappy we actually were. Rates of depression and anxiety at elite colleges told me something in this equation just wasn't right.
Culture--workplaces, schools, families, traditions, communities, the media, and everything else that has a presence in our lives--have immense power to subconsciously shape who we think we should be, what we should value, and what we should want. And yet, we can embrace opportunities in life to examine and consciously choose whether to integrate the ways we were taught into ourselves, or to choose others that may serve us more fully and invite us to unfold, to become, to express our fullest manifestations of uniqueness and goodness and freedom. I see the capacity we have as human beings to shape each other for better things, for truer callings, for more meaningful and fulfilling ways to live—rather than getting stuck in "shoulds."
I tried for a while to build this kind of "should" life, but it didn't mean a whole lot to me. I was sold a false bill of goods and I didn't want it anymore. Instead, I began to explore things that were more truly me, that honored my strengths, and that made me feel alive and purposeful. Because life is too damn short not to do these things, if we get the chance to try.
In 2018, I experienced a deep, personal, sudden and unexpected loss. This tragedy broke me, and also blossomed into a journey of exploration on loss, trauma, healing, and positive psychology. It reconnected me with some of my long-time loves of nature, yoga, and dance as lifelines amidst life after loss. It helped me reintegrate my totally different reality with my evolving worldview, values, convictions, and beliefs.
All of these experiences led me to the collection of work I do now in life coaching, organizational culture consulting, and organizing community spaces to honor loss, grief, and healing. This work continues to give back to me in bucket-fulls, especially when I get to connect with others on the real, raw, deep things in life—what's good, what's not so good, and what it all might mean.
Dave Evans, founder of the popular Design Your Life course at Stanford, describes life as "wayfinding." This lovely word captures so much. That finding our things takes time, that we can experiment and fail, that we don't have to strive for perfection, that we can seek out the things that make us come most alive, and that those things can change with time.
May we all be brave enough to wayfind, and may we have supportive communities beside, before, and behind us as we go.
I grew up in a small Wisconsin town of maybe 600 folks. My dad owned a custom homebuilding company. My mom drove the bus I rode to school each day. They worked hard, and they taught my siblings and I the value of effort and a dollar. As a girl, I didn't know where life would take me, but I knew that I wouldn't stay in Wisconsin forever. I wanted to expand. I lived for short times in Philadelphia, Chicago, Seattle, and Maryland before landing where I currently live in DC.
Finding my current way of life took some time, and it is still ever-evolving. In college, I was driven toward a life that would mean something to a lot of other people. I felt pressure to get a "respectable" job, make a "high-enough" salary, move to a "good city," choose the "right person" to be with, and be a "happy person." I noticed the wide gulf between how happy my college peers and I were supposed to be, and how unhappy we actually were. Rates of depression and anxiety at elite colleges told me something in this equation just wasn't right.
Culture--workplaces, schools, families, traditions, communities, the media, and everything else that has a presence in our lives--have immense power to subconsciously shape who we think we should be, what we should value, and what we should want. And yet, we can embrace opportunities in life to examine and consciously choose whether to integrate the ways we were taught into ourselves, or to choose others that may serve us more fully and invite us to unfold, to become, to express our fullest manifestations of uniqueness and goodness and freedom. I see the capacity we have as human beings to shape each other for better things, for truer callings, for more meaningful and fulfilling ways to live—rather than getting stuck in "shoulds."
I tried for a while to build this kind of "should" life, but it didn't mean a whole lot to me. I was sold a false bill of goods and I didn't want it anymore. Instead, I began to explore things that were more truly me, that honored my strengths, and that made me feel alive and purposeful. Because life is too damn short not to do these things, if we get the chance to try.
In 2018, I experienced a deep, personal, sudden and unexpected loss. This tragedy broke me, and also blossomed into a journey of exploration on loss, trauma, healing, and positive psychology. It reconnected me with some of my long-time loves of nature, yoga, and dance as lifelines amidst life after loss. It helped me reintegrate my totally different reality with my evolving worldview, values, convictions, and beliefs.
All of these experiences led me to the collection of work I do now in life coaching, organizational culture consulting, and organizing community spaces to honor loss, grief, and healing. This work continues to give back to me in bucket-fulls, especially when I get to connect with others on the real, raw, deep things in life—what's good, what's not so good, and what it all might mean.
Dave Evans, founder of the popular Design Your Life course at Stanford, describes life as "wayfinding." This lovely word captures so much. That finding our things takes time, that we can experiment and fail, that we don't have to strive for perfection, that we can seek out the things that make us come most alive, and that those things can change with time.
May we all be brave enough to wayfind, and may we have supportive communities beside, before, and behind us as we go.
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"You can't navigate like a GPS would because you don't have a map. You have to wayfind.
And wayfinding means taking one step at a time knowing something about the direction you're going, trying a few things, tuning it up and then doing it again and doing it again. None of us knows the future – we're making it up as we go along – so let's get really good at making it up as we go along." – Dave Evans |
Influencers and favorites
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I have no answers, but I have a lot of questions, and those questions have helped me to live better than any answers I might find. – Rachel Naomi Remen |