What if exhaustion, brain fog, and persistent health symptoms were a reason to pause and listen—not just push through? This conversation follows national board-certified health and wellness coach Jen Dorf’s "pivot path" from a high-pressure career and entrepreneurship to coaching, sparked by her own health struggles. Christa and Jen also unpack how limiting beliefs, self-talk, and old patterns can block change—even when someone knows what to do! Jen shares practical insights into health coaching, radical self-compassion, and the RAIN framework for working through difficulties. This episode is for anyone feeling stuck in health or career patterns and looking for a more grounded next step!

In this episode

• The thread connecting Jen’s career in hospitality, entrepreneurship, and coaching
• How motherhood, business, and health challenges contributed to overwhelm
• Why Jen began exploring anti-inflammatory foods and mindfulness
• How coaching helped her identify limiting beliefs and build consistency
• What health coaching looks like—and how it supports client agency
• The role of neuroplasticity and small, repeated steps in changing habits
• How radical acceptance and self-compassion can help when you feel stuck
• Jen’s RAIN practice for responding to difficult emotions

00:00 — Jen’s health challenges and the pivot into coaching
01:09 — The thread connecting hotels, restaurants, and service
02:35 — Motherhood, overwhelm, and life before the pivot
04:12 — Searching for answers to persistent symptoms
05:07 — Exploring food as anti-inflammatory support
06:21 — Why new habits still needed support
07:33 — Presence, care, and deeper healing
08:43 — Fear, self-doubt, and imposter syndrome
10:31 — Neuroplasticity and building new patterns
11:28 — What health coaching looks like
12:26 — Clarity, values, and getting off autopilot
13:30 — Radical acceptance and self-compassion
14:39 — The RAIN framework
16:56 — Sitting with discomfort and letting emotions pass
17:28 — Jen’s community work and where to find her

RAIN practice

• Recognize what is happening.
• Allow the feeling to be there without immediately trying to fix it.
• Investigate what you notice in your body.
• Nurture yourself with care and compassion

Website: jendorfwellness.com

Social: @jendorfwellnesscoaching

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Before Nancy Leighton became a career counselor, she spent six years in retail — including a stint as the hat, glove, and muffler buyer at Brooks Brothers. One class, audited on a whim at the Teachers College of Columbia University, changed everything. Nancy shares what it took to walk away from something stable (against her family's wishes), finish a two-year master's over four years while working full-time, and eventually build a practice she now runs with two counselors under her. Thirty years in, she breaks down what actually helps people find the right career fit — and what to do if you're stuck in your own version of the hat and glove department right now!

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What do you do when the career you love is suddenly taken from you? For Adriana Brangi, the answer was: you find a new way to swim.

In 2020, Adriana was diagnosed with primary progressive multiple sclerosis — a diagnosis that ended her career as a preschool teacher and forced her to completely rethink what her life and work would look like going forward.

Rather than letting MS dictate her limits, Adriana found something unexpected: freedom in the water. She became a certified scuba diver and discovered that diving gave her a sense of physical control she couldn’t find on land. As she puts it, “When I go into the water, I have full range of motion… everything works better. I’m me again.”

That experience led her to found Diving Beyond MS, a nonprofit dedicated to spreading MS awareness and helping people with chronic illnesses experience the healing and freedom of diving firsthand.

In this episode, Adriana shares her full career journey — from the life she built as a preschool teacher, through the disruption of her diagnosis, to the moment she found a new sense of purpose underwater. It’s a conversation about resilience, reinvention, and what it means to find a new way forward when the life you planned is no longer available to you.

Topics discussed:

• Adriana’s career as a preschool teacher and how her MS diagnosis upended it

• Adapting to life with primary progressive MS

• Discovering scuba diving and the physical/emotional relief it provided

• Founding Diving Beyond MS and its mission

• Advocacy for chronic illness and disability awareness

• Redefining identity and purpose after a life-altering diagnosis

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