Hi, I’m Mariah! I guide people through thresholds into lives more aligned and alive.
I’m a multi-passionate human with consistent conversation that has woven itself through all of the last 20 years of my professional life, no matter the context. Whether serving as senior faculty teaching outdoor leadership with NOLS, as a Physician Associate (PA) in varying clinical contexts, or working as a ceramic artist,
I have always been drawn toward what happens when ordinary life has been interrupted and we find ourselves asking what is most true, most important, most alive.
As a backpacking, mountaineering, and climbing instructor for NOLS, this looked like journeying with students through unfamiliar and challenging terrain navigating both the inner and outer wilderness. I walked my students (everyone from professionals, Wharton business students, educators, and teens alike) through high peaks with heavy backpacks, epic mountain storms, and navigating without a path and only a map and compass. And in each case, what emerged were the biggest questions about who we are and what we’re capable of as human beings, especially while navigating fears, insecurities, and challenges. This inner work, and learning to collaborate with a team, allowed them to return to the rest of their lives with clarity and purpose.
As a PA, I spent years having that same conversation. While working in palliative care, I sat with people facing life-altering diagnoses and listened deeply to help them find clarity about what mattered most; What they actually wanted, what aligned with their deepest values in face of an uncertain future that was far from what was imagined, and helping to make unthinkably complex decisions that could only be theirs. In the emergency department, urgent care, and family medicine contexts, I met people at every spectrum of crisis and ordinary life. Over those years, I learned to read the truth beneath what was said, while also staying present with who they were and who they were becoming.
While technical mountain travel skills, risk management, and clinical acumen were foundational to these roles, the most important work I have ever done was within myself. I learned to develop a sense of presence through the wilderness of being human – the willingness to sit compassionately within uncomfortable uncertainty and help others locate what was still true about themselves.
THAT WORK, THRESHOLD WORK, IS WHAT I’M BUILT FOR.
I CANNOT TAKE YOU ANYWHERE I HAVEN’T GONE MYSELF.
I’ve crossed many of my own thresholds - relationship losses and changes, a life that resembles little of what I used to imagine, injuries, many moves, a “dark night of the soul” of faith deconstruction, loss of loved ones, and most recently untangling from a misaligned career in the healthcare system. I’ve walked the shadows and grief of loss, the fear of the unknown, shedding narratives that no longer serve, and continuously learning to return to anchoring, agency, and trust in myself to step forward in courage and joy to author a life that feels genuinely mine. I continuously return to the same tools I teach, because I cannot take you anywhere I haven’t gone myself. Working with clay as a ceramic artist for the past two decades has been my way of alchemizing my evolution into functional art.
My Approach
As a coach, I’m equal parts evidence-based logic and spiritual mystic, and ever a student of life. I’m a certified Wayfinder Life Coach trained by Harvard-trained sociologist Dr. Martha Beck. My coaching style involves a tapestry of steady presence, powerful questions, practical neuroscience, embodied practices, thought work to challenge old narratives, somatic parts work, creativity, play, and imagination to help you follow your inner compass to build a fulfilling and expansive life. I strongly believe that our inner wisdom is accessible to all and the navigation system for a purposeful and joy-filled life, and it’s not in adding but in removing all that obstructs this light that we gain clarity and freedom - Because when we reclaim our agency, creativity, and aliveness, we make the world more kind, just and alive.