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Life coaching with no spiritual framing for people navigating major life transitions

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Thoughtful, secular support for navigating change, limitation, and identity—with clarity, care, and no false promises

Life Coaching: An Introduction

     Life coaching is a supportive partnership. It’s designed to help you gain clarity, work through obstacles, and make changes that matter to you. As your life coach, I work with you to explore what you want for your life. Together, we look at what may be getting in the way. We also develop practical, realistic ways to move forward — at a pace you can sustain.

Life coaching is not therapy. Therapy often focuses on healing the past. Coaching focuses on the present and the future.

​     In coaching, we pay attention to what’s happening now. We look at what’s possible next.

The goal is to build awareness, strengthen accountability, and take intentional steps toward your personal or professional goals. At its core, life coaching helps you:

• notice and use your strengths
• make decisions that feel aligned
• build a life that feels more purposeful, fulfilling, and authentic

     People use coaching in many areas of life.

​     I specialize in supporting people through major life transitions — including:

• the death of a loved one
• an unexpected career change
• an acquired disability or new health diagnosis

     ​My coaching is secular. That means that I don’t use religious or spiritual frameworks. I focus instead on clarity, meaning, and growth in practical, grounded ways. This approach works well for people who prefer evidence-based tools and plain language.

     Secular coaching can help you:

• Identify your values, goals, and motivations
• Build confidence and self-awareness
• Develop actionable strategies for real challenges
• Create habits that support well-being over time

     I use a secular approach because I don’t believe in God and wanted to offer a coaching option that respects people who feel the same way. This approach isn’t for everyone — and that’s okay. 

     In our Zoom sessions (with cameras on or off), we take time to:

• Name what’s actually happening
• Acknowledge real constraints, without letting them define you
• Clarify what matters now — not what used to
• Take small, doable steps that build confidence over time

     There’s no rushing. There’s no pushing.

     We work at a pace your life can support. We adjust as needed.

     You set the boundaries!

More About Sarah Levis, Your Transitions Coach 

     I really wish a secular coach had been available to me when I had a stroke after brain surgery at 22.

     The stroke left my dominant side — my left side — almost totally incapacitated.

     At the time, I was still mourning my mother’s death, not even three years earlier. I was also trying to decide whether the faith system I’d been raised in was still going to work for me.

     Then suddenly, my plans for my life were derailed yet again.

     Nearly twenty-five years later, I still live one-handed and I walk with a cane. I’m now very comfortable being a disabled woman living in a society built for able-bodied people.

It took me a long time to get here.

      I wish that someone had been around in those first years after my stroke to help me understand how acquiring a disability changed the way society looked at me and treated me — how it evaluated my worth, my potential, and my place in the world.

     I also wish someone had helped me understand that none of those judgments needed to reach the core of who I am.

Some people call the day they had their stroke their “rebirthday.” For me, nothing about who I am died that day, except some brain cells and some neural pathways. I’m still me, with a left side that doesn't work very well, a seizure disorder, and a powerful belief developed with a lot of hard work that the state of my body doesn't determine the state of my life unless I let it. 

     But these transitions are difficult, and I’m hoping to be the person for others that I wish I’d had during that transition — and during other life changes like it.

   Thank you for visiting my website today. ​​​ Please join our e-newsletter to learn more about Running Steps and to read parts of my story that won't be posted on the blog!

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Services

Change can arrive quietly—or turn everything upside down. Your body feels different. Work loses meaning. The future you imagined shifts out of view. You’re not broken; the old map just no longer fits.

I offer secular life coaching for people navigating real transitions—those ready to move forward with honesty, clarity, and compassion, without being asked to believe in what doesn’t ring true. You don’t need to have everything figured out to begin.

I can help you navigate a variety of life transitions, including:

Broken Heart Icon

Grief is a profound life transition—a reshaping of who you are after loss. The world feels unfamiliar, and the old map no longer fits. I can help you  honor what’s gone while gently learning to live your best life in the landscape that follows - whatever your loss, wherever you are in your grieving. 

Hands Tracing Art

When old beliefs no longer fit, you may find yourself between worlds—questioning, searching, beginning again. My secular coaching offers an in‑between space, where you can honor what once guided you and gently shape a spirituality that feels fulfilling to you and true to who you are now.

Image by Zachary Kyra-Derksen

When you acquire a disability or chronic illness, it can reshape how you move through the world and see yourself. My secular coaching  offers space to grieve what’s different, honor what remains, and build a life that feels workable and joyful in your new reality and the society in which you live.

Image by Daniel Lloyd Blunk-Fernández

The Latest from Our Blog, "Reframing":

"What could I say? The expert wasn’t worried. I couldn’t say that I was reassured, though, as I lay awake in my tent, considering my options. I didn’t want to stay, but the cars were a mile’s walk through the dark forest. I wasn’t going to do that alone, and I wasn’t going to wake anyone to come with me or help secure the food.

 

I couldn't sleep. I was listening for activity in the campsite, thinking about a story my mother had once told me. Not long after they were married, my grandparents had gone camping with my Grandpa's brothers. In the middle of the night, Grandpa heard shuffling outside the tent, right by his head. Assuming his brothers were trying to prank him, he reached out and walloped the tent wall. The roar from the other side told him he’d connected—not with a brother, but with a bear. They were lucky; the bear was so shocked that it ran.

 

Eventually, something occurred to me."

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