About
The Woman Behind the Work
"You did not survive the water to stay on the shore. You were made to rise, to rebuild, and to thrive."— Kristin Coad
I didn't come to this work because it was my dream. I came to it because surviving wasn't enough — and I needed to understand why.
When I was in the middle of the hardest period of my life — navigating intimate partner violence, raising my kids, trying to hold a job, trying to hold myself together — I didn't have language for what was happening to me. I just knew I was suffering in ways that were invisible to almost everyone around me. I looked functional. I was in survival mode. And I needed tools.
So I found them. Therapy. Group support through House of Ruth Maryland. Holistic practices. A life coaching certification — not because I was building a brand, but because I needed to learn how to say what was happening to me so I could ask for help. That certification gave me a framework for my own mind at a time when I genuinely did not understand why I was struggling the way I was.
Around that same time, I was working in a professional environment surrounded by researchers, clinicians, and ethicists — people with advanced degrees doing serious work. What I had was curiosity and the sense to shut up and learn. I absorbed how they thought. I came to genuinely value the science — not as a performance of credibility, but because that way of thinking helped me make sense of my own experience and eventually helped me help others make sense of theirs.
As the layers of trauma cleared, something deeper emerged. Gifts I had carried since childhood — intuition, heightened perception, a sensitivity to energy — came forward with a clarity I had never known. Healing didn't just restore me. It unlocked me. That combination — lived experience, real proximity to clinical and ethical frameworks, and a spiritual awakening I didn't see coming — is what I bring to this work.
My experience as a survivor eventually led me back to House of Ruth as a Peer Facilitator — co-leading a storytelling program for IPV survivors. Sitting in those rooms, witnessing women find words for their pain, confirmed everything. I am a mother, an advocate, a seeker, and a woman who turned her deepest wounds into her greatest purpose. Out of the Water is that purpose made visible.
I am not a therapist. I will never position myself as one. What I am is a bridge. I know the invisible layer — the part that doesn't show up in a police report, the part your family doesn't see, the part you can't explain even when you're standing right next to people who love you. I know it because I lived it. And I know enough about the science, the resources, and the language to help you find your way toward the right support. My goal is never to be your everything. My goal is to help you find your words, identify your next step, and connect you to the people and tools that can actually help you heal.
