Photo by Christina Sorensen @apparativ
Hey, I'm Jonelle
I love to partner with people to help them become more of who they want to be
A little bit about me
- Life and leadership coach
- Positive psychology practitioner
- Organizational culture consultant at THRUUE Inc
- Co-founder of The Movement for Healing Project
- Healing Arts Director and Project Manager at Interfusion Festival
- Interests in neuroscience, psychology, grief, loss and healing, trauma recovery, existentialism, meaning and purpose, philosophy, spirituality, memoir
- Free-time hiker, camper, backpacker, and latin dancer
- Wisconsin-born, now in Washington, DC, with 4 cities in the time between
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
– Rachel Naomi Remen
My values
- Curiosity – Approaching life with inquiry and open-ended questions
- Wisdom – Drawing on many ways of knowing including experience and intuition
- Perspective-taking – Looking beyond the "one-side" approach for other context
- Paradox – Making room for the wisdom of both/and rather than either/or
- Ownership – Having what they call the give-a-shit factor
If we're not supposed to dance, why all this music?
– Gregory Orr
– Gregory Orr
My story
I grew up in a small Wisconsin town of maybe 600 folks. My dad was a sole proprietor carpenter. 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 couldn't stay in Wisconsin forever. I wanted to expand, to see more, to experience more. Getting to where I am now took some time. Actually, it is still ever-evolving. But here's part of the story.
I went to college in Philadelphia, which was a total change from my rural roots. I wanted to be wildly successful. But I hadn't really decided for myself what success looked like. So in college I was funneled toward building a life that would mean something to a lot of other people: getting a "respectable" job, making a "high-enough" salary, moving to an "interesting enough" city, choosing the "right person" to marry happily-ever-after, and being a "happy put-together" person. And while my peers and I were all trying to do things the "right" way, I noticed a massive gap between how happy we were supposed to be and how miserable many of us actually were. Rates of depression and anxiety across elite colleges, in addition to more than 10 suicides in four years, told me something in this equation just wasn't right.
The things that have presence in our lives--our workplaces, schools, families, traditions, communities, media and social media--have immense power to subconsciously shape who we think we should be. Unless we wake up to consciously choosing what to adopt and ascribe as our own definitions of a good life, what will be fulfilling, what honors our uniqueness and invites us to unfold, to become, to express our fullest manifestations of goodness and freedom. I can 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 a "should" life, but eventually I hit a wall. I am not built to live this way. I don't think any of us are.
In 2018, I experienced a profoundly deep and unexpected loss. My dad took his own life. This loss broke me. It shattered my understanding of the world and left me trying to put pieces back together again in a world fundamentally and forever different for me.
Faced with the reality of mortality and conviction about the precious brevity of life, I began a new journey of meaning-making, exploring things that honored my strengths and interests and that made me feel alive and purposeful. I have made myself a student of loss and grief, trauma and healing, and positive psychology. I have deepened rituals of nature immersion, yoga, dance, and community as my lifelines. And a dear friend and I began creating spaces for others to grapple with loss, grief, and healing in communities of witnesses. My life gives 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 went to college in Philadelphia, which was a total change from my rural roots. I wanted to be wildly successful. But I hadn't really decided for myself what success looked like. So in college I was funneled toward building a life that would mean something to a lot of other people: getting a "respectable" job, making a "high-enough" salary, moving to an "interesting enough" city, choosing the "right person" to marry happily-ever-after, and being a "happy put-together" person. And while my peers and I were all trying to do things the "right" way, I noticed a massive gap between how happy we were supposed to be and how miserable many of us actually were. Rates of depression and anxiety across elite colleges, in addition to more than 10 suicides in four years, told me something in this equation just wasn't right.
The things that have presence in our lives--our workplaces, schools, families, traditions, communities, media and social media--have immense power to subconsciously shape who we think we should be. Unless we wake up to consciously choosing what to adopt and ascribe as our own definitions of a good life, what will be fulfilling, what honors our uniqueness and invites us to unfold, to become, to express our fullest manifestations of goodness and freedom. I can 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 a "should" life, but eventually I hit a wall. I am not built to live this way. I don't think any of us are.
In 2018, I experienced a profoundly deep and unexpected loss. My dad took his own life. This loss broke me. It shattered my understanding of the world and left me trying to put pieces back together again in a world fundamentally and forever different for me.
Faced with the reality of mortality and conviction about the precious brevity of life, I began a new journey of meaning-making, exploring things that honored my strengths and interests and that made me feel alive and purposeful. I have made myself a student of loss and grief, trauma and healing, and positive psychology. I have deepened rituals of nature immersion, yoga, dance, and community as my lifelines. And a dear friend and I began creating spaces for others to grapple with loss, grief, and healing in communities of witnesses. My life gives 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.
Influencers and favorites
"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 |
Photo by Christina Sorensen @apparativ
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Experience
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2019 – Current
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Life Coach
APPC Certified by The Flourishing Center, an ACTP ICF-Certified Program |
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2016 – Current
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Workplace culture and strategy consultant @ THRUUE Inc
Strategy and workplace culture consultancy that helps leaders set strategy and shift culture to drive growth |
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2019 – Current
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Co-Founder @ The Movement for Healing Project
A community that cultivates spaces to experience how community, connection, and body-centered practices can help heal in life after loss |
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2019 – Current
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Healing Arts Director and Project Manager @ Interfusion Festival
Brings together like-minded souls from across the US and beyond for four days of learning, healing, play and connection on MLK weekend |
Education and professional certifications
- Certified Applied Positive Psychology Coach @ the Flourishing Center | 2019
- Certified Applied Positive Psychology Practitioner @ The Flourishing Center | 2019
- Organizational Culture Inventory® and Organizational Effectiveness Inventory® Accreditation @ Human Synergistics | 2018
- Cultural Transformation Tools Consultant Accreditation @ the Barrett Values Centre | 2016
- BS in Economics @ Wharton School of Business, Magna Cum Laude | 2014
Failure is not the opposite of success but a stepping stone to success.
– Arianna Huffington
– Arianna Huffington
Published writing and speaking
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On Loss and Healing @ Interfusion Full Moon Blog |
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The Millennial Perspective On Company Culture @ THRUUE Points Blog |
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Redefining Success On College Campuses @ THRIVE Global |
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Embrace Failure to Curb Unhealthy Competition @ Work and Life Podcast with Stew Friedman |
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Letters: Suicide On Campus and the Pressure of Perfection @ The New York Times |
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Why I Can't Leave Penn Saying That I Loved It @ The Daily Pennsylvanian |