doing things differently this time
the story of why i left the coaching industry almost 5 years ago & what brought me back
I left the coaching industry back in 2021. Or at least, I told myself it was a break (for the unforeseeable future).
If you had asked me what I wanted back then, my dream was to go full-time with my coaching practice. I had manifested a full time job in coaching, where I had the honor & privilege to be trained in the Co-Active coaching method, coach 125 students over a 2 year period to witness their growth, and start building clientele outside of my 9-5, which slowly gave me the confidence to continue down this path.
I was writing, posting as consistently as I could, and giving my all to my clients, students and my relationships (romantic, family, and friends).
I pushed until I could no longer go.
And I lost track of what I was doing this for all along.
Rather than wallow in the shame of “giving up,” I’ve since learned to grieve, reframe my time away, and remember that each moment has shaped me into who I am today.
Because at the end of the day, I am someone who has lived a life and has the privilege of being able to share those lessons + my worldview of seeing possibility with others.
When I left the coaching industry, I was in a season of making space for life — and that wasn’t any less valid than someone else’s chapter where they kept going while I slowed down.
Everything I Tried to Escape
*content/trigger warning for suicide
They say when it rains, it pours. In my case, I was pushing myself to do everything I could to make my coaching business work (and spoiler alert: it backfired on me).
I couldn’t see it at the time since I was too immersed in my world, but “making” it work was forceful energy. It was basically repackaged “hustle culture,” the very thing I tried to escape.
The dissonance between the person I was as a coach & the life I was living in reality grew bigger and bigger until it burst, and everything crumbled.
Business wise:
I invested in branding.
I invested in coaching.
I was guest coaching in programs & collaborating with other coaches in my field.
I was marketing, selling, and working 9-5 with students & after work hours with clients globally (US & Asia Time Zones).
All my time was spent on coaching & building. I saw growth. I gained visibility. And it sure did look productive on the outside.
Personally:
I carried doubt that coaching would work out full-time immediately (look at me… rushing my timeline), so I was doing informational interviews to explore a pivot into recruiting because I wanted options to keep building my financial safety net.
I was grieving leaving the education space & my coworkers because this team was my favorite space I’ve ever worked in.
I had a career coaching session with a coach who told me I’d hate recruiting just 10 minutes before I had an interview for a role (which I ended up getting still, but the discouragement could have really tanked my confidence and belief in myself).
I was feeling the stress of living at home during the pandemic and comparing my journey to everyone else who seemed to have it all together & was making more money than me, quicker.
My health was on a decline because of my consistent canker sores that would happen from me talking all the time, not eating well, not sleeping well and overall dissociating from my body & my emotions.
And then the biggest news came to my attention: one of my mentees, Chelsea, had died by suicide, right before Mental Health Awareness Month, which is the month we’d always reconnect. May was one of the most important months that informed my own work and how it’s evolved (For context: I was originally a emotional health/self love coach → then slow living creator/conscious life coach. In each pivot, I realized how much self-love & self-trust was core to my work).
I felt so much grief for her no longer being here physically on this planet. And even holding onto the memories we shared together & connecting with her spirit, my heart ached for how much her death revealed to me how much I rushed my own life & timeline. How much I made decisions for others and not for myself.
I just… didn’t recognize who I was anymore.
Despite external praise & my brand’s slow growth, nothing felt like it was enough.
Because ultimately, I didn’t like how I was moving.
I noticed myself becoming so consumed with my business, making things work, that I lost track of why I was doing this work in the first place — to build a life that is rich, full, joyful, and with the people I love.
To give myself time & freedom to honor my energy and gifts, and to have capacity to check in with the people who have been part of my journey.
To build wealth to give back to my family, my friends, and to community. To be present for the moments that matter most.
Chelsea’s death reminded me how much I was not tending to my own mental health. And as someone who was suicidal before in the past (in both high school & my early years of college), this opened up a wound in me — my darkest shadows came up to the surface and asked for my attention.
For a long time, I felt deep shame for not taking care of myself better because if I did, I could have checked in on her more (This was the story I repeatedly told myself).
I blamed myself for something that wasn’t necessarily in my control. My mind told me it was my fault, it was my responsibility, that I could have and should have done more.
And my relationship to self & how I thought about work, rest and play were all screwed up. I had to rebuild. I had to slow down.
So I did — I chose to slow down, embodied what I taught clients, and took a step away as I redesigned my life, recalibrated my priorities and my actions, and lived my life offline without the pressure of making coaching full-time.
What that looked like in practice? Well, it meant stepping away from coaching (without a formal announcement) & fully leaning into where life took me, one day at a time.
My cocoon phase
After going full force into trying to make entrepreneurship work, losing myself in all the noise & replicating the culture of work I was trying to escape, I did a full retreat into my cocoon.
I told myself that the most important things I wanted to prioritize were:
live offline (hang out with my friends, family, loved ones)
travel more & see the world!!
write but don’t feel pressured to publish or monetize
build a financial safety net
move out of my hometown
go back to therapy to work on my relationship to money, work, and my mother/father wounds
To do this, I knew I didn’t have the capacity to build a business that wasn’t tending to the security I needed at the time.
And to me at the time, security = recurring paycheck + health insurance.
So any decision I made led to the fulfillment of what I desired. And I got it. Every single time I sought it out. (hello survival instincts)
But eventually, after two layoffs in corporate, I started to get an itch toward returning to entrepreneurship, even if I didn’t know what it was going to look like.
I had some coaching sessions & conversations with peers, but I was adamant on not returning to the coaching industry.
I felt like that chapter had closed and there HAD to be another skill set I could tap into, right?? But even in recruiting, I still found myself coaching people (in a different way). I found myself still mentoring first gen professionals who were early or mid career. I found myself still supporting people with career strategy, pivots, processing layoff trauma, and redefining who we are outside of our work.
I did a lot of work to get really curious with myself & have conversations with my inner child, present day Eril, and future Eril.
My curiosity led me to realizing that there were certain experiences that made me feel the most full:
when I was in a space of guiding someone toward their goals
when I was in a space of holding space for someone & allowing them to feel seen
when I was in a space of expanding the perspective of someone toward possibility
when I was integrating the things I was learning & reflecting on them through writing or in conversation/relationship with those who loved me (who were a safe space for me).
when I had spaciousness in my days (after my second layoff, I felt most free traveling, seeing my family, being with friends and my partner, going to the library, and enjoying creative pursuits)
And even though these things don’t clearly translate to a specific “job” or “role”, it helped me get clearer on the things I value, the life I want to create for myself, and the types of jobs that honor the specifics of what matters to me in this next chapter of my life.
So with this information, the most immediate steps I took before I ever considered going back to coaching were:
Find a recruiting role (or any people centered, talent development shaped, or learning & development shaped role) at a social good/mission-driven organization
Create a Substack to start formalizing my writing since I didn’t want to reactivate my coaching website/scrap that website
Continue to strengthen my spiritual practice & relationship with my ancestors and culture
And then I’d figure out the rest.
Well… the moment I started writing again, I got an opportunity come my way for a recruiting role at a tech non profit in the criminal justice space, interviewed and landed the role in less than a week.
(This will be a story for another time on how writing becomes a portal for your next chapter).
And even though I got the “job,” it still wasn’t enough.
This role reminded me of how much I needed to not lose sight of everything I worked to unlearn from my time away from hustle culture. Surviving layoff trauma twice impacted my body in more ways I could name at the time, and all my body knew was that I’d never want to put myself in that situation again if I could help it.
But deep down, I also knew that through baby steps of writing again (the craft that was always a part of me) & pulling back if I needed extra emotional support as I expanded my capacity, that I was now in a resourced and supportive space where I could actually ask myself, “Is this really what I want?”
And so the exploration & revisiting of coaching became more clear.
Emerging where I am today
Questioning what was always defined as “success” and “safety” for so long in my life was a journey in itself. Through a lot of therapy, more self-reflection & inquiry through journaling, and living my life offline, I nurtured my intuition — my inner compass toward what my answer to this question is.
Because where I’ve been recently is not really what I want.
Recruiting is something I can do (and I’m very good at it), but it’s not where I see myself long term. It has skills I can take into a new space, but it’s not the role where my skills can truly shine.
A corporate 9-5 job is the most “stable” thing I could give myself after growing up with instability for most of my life, but it isn’t the version of stable that I crave for myself right now. It simply isn’t what I value at this time in my life.
And if I’m really honest… I delayed my return to coaching because I was afraid that no one would remember me and that everything I had built would have been obsolete.
That fear of rejection paralyzed me into not taking action, to staying less visible as I “figured things out.”
I questioned what my block was on returning to the coaching industry at least once a month. I wondered if this was my dream or if it was someone else’s. I wondered if I could fully let it go. And I also wondered if there was possibility for my story to be rewritten and for me to come back, on my own terms.
So I took the time to really untangle these thoughts and decide for myself, in a way that felt true to me. With an answer I liked and trusted.
Because one of the biggest lessons I learned from my cocooning/time away, as I slowly came back to the online space is that I’m not starting from ground zero.
I’m starting from a foundation of what I’ve created before & I’ve since integrated life lessons from 2021 that show the results of Heart-Led (my new 1:1 coaching program) in action!
I’m carrying every version of past me, every lesson integrated, every moment experienced.
Each of these versions have brought me to where I am today. And I’m so proud of those versions for doing their very best.
I saw a quote recently that said “If I slow down, I’m scared I’ll fall apart.”
And I think that’s the reason for why I pushed so hard to make things work, to avoid the uncomfortable feelings of the messy middle, of growth, of expansion into my next chapter.
Because I did fall apart. I fell apart so much that I stepped away from the coaching industry, from years of burn out, self-abandonment, and lack of trust in my own timing.
But now I’m back, and I welcome the slowing down truly, with open arms.
Because before, security = recurring paycheck + health insurance.
But now, security has been redefined as time freedom & flexibility with my work.
I accomplished so much of what I prioritized in my cocoon phase, and even if I could shame myself for all the time that passed where I didn’t “build my business” that wouldn’t accomplish what I think it would.
I realize through compassion for myself that past Eril just wanted to feel taken care of. And I’ve done so much to give that to her, and now she’s in a different place.
I decided last year in 2025 that I was going to quit my role, but I never decided when that day would be. A few weeks ago, I decided that day would be the beginning of September.
So here I am, emerging1 as the budding entrepreneur I’ve been and will continue to be as I step more into the spaces asking me to be seen.
As I continue to offer my gifts to the community.
As I continue to trust myself, experiment, and play.
Because even if I don’t have it all figured out, I’m confident enough to know this is my path & I believe in myself enough to keep going. ♡
If you’ve made it this far, thank you so much for reading! If this piece touched your heart or resonated in anyway, please comment down below or reply directly to this email — I’d love to hear from you!
And if you’re interested in exploring what it could look like to work together 1:1, check out the details for Heart-Led, my signature 1:1 program for those looking to reconnect with their creative fire, deepen their capacity & build a life guided by possibility. ✿