About

About Kortney

You used to have big dreams and passion for life.

But life happened, and somehow along the way, you told yourself that there were other, more important responsibilities that had to come first.

You learned to feel guilty for wanting things out of life for yourself. Maybe you learned to hate your body, and you may have even learned to believe that you don’t deserve all of those dreams to come true.

You wake up each day dutifully attending to your life, going through the motions, yet you can’t help but feel the nudge that you are meant for more.

Those dreams are still in the back of your mind.

Those dreams are absolutely within your reach.

And you don’t have to feel guilty or undeserving of them!

my story

Hi, I'm Kortney.

I help wise, passionate women, like you, stop feeling trapped at where they are in life and start feeling empowered to create a life they’re inspired to live.

They feel the nudge there is a bigger life waiting for them but they don’t know what that is or how to find it.

I help them love who they are so they can find the confidence they need to take bold steps toward creating a life full of love, ease, flow, joy and possibility.

My Story

As a kid, I was an overachiever and a perfectionist.

I learned really quickly that outperforming everyone else, or doing something really impressive was an excellent way to feel really good about myself – because of the positive feedback it brought me.

But it was a never-ending cycle because the more I achieved the more I had to do to get the same amount of validation.

The problem with this cycle was twofold:

First, I never learned to give myself positive feedback, and second, I had to keep doing more and more to get the same level of positive feedback. It was exhausting.

Being an overachiever and perfectionist brought many opportunities to me, like being a star athlete and valedictorian of my high school class. They led me to a degree in aerospace engineering and jobs at top aerospace companies like Boeing and Gulfstream. But these qualities also led me into an eating disorder that I struggled with for many years.

I struggled with bulimia off and on from the time I was in junior high school through much of my adult life. The exhausting cycle I had been living in as an overachiever-perfectionist meant that I depended on validation and external approval for every shred of my self-worth, but the eating disorder kept me safe from the feelings of inadequacy since I wasn’t able to validate myself.

The eating disorder enabled me to sufficiently "numb out" the feelings of self-hatred, failure, and inadequacy so I could be "fine".

next up…

Checking the Boxes

Next up was college and checking all the other boxes to have the life we’re “supposed to” have.

I graduated with a degree in aerospace engineering, got a good job, got married, had kids, lived in a beautiful house, and I was a good mom. But somehow, it didn’t seem like enough.

Something was missing, but I felt guilty for feeling that way. The way I saw it, I had a lot to be grateful for, so shouldn’t I just be thankful for the life I have?

When my first child was born, I left my career to become a stay-at-home mom. I didn’t love the drab desk environment of being an engineer, and to be honest, I had major imposter syndrome. On top of feeling like I wasn’t thin enough, or pretty enough, I also didn’t think I was smart enough. It wasn’t really the reason I left my career, but I always found myself struggling to feel comfortable in it. It didn’t feel right to me.

I loved being a stay-at-home mom, but it was also hard for me. In my heart, I didn’t want to go back to my engineering career, but it was my identity. It was a career that was well-respected. It was a “smart” career – it was impressive to those on the outside (remember that external validation that gave me my hit of worthiness).

Without the shield of my "smart career" to impress people, I felt lost.

I felt like people looked down on me. It was a difficult transition to make because I didn’t know how to stand with my own “enoughness” yet. I was used to using crutches like a “smart career”, or even overachieving at hobbies, to do that.

I started a portrait photography business to keep my brain and my creative side busy. The business did well and it fulfilled my need to stay busy with something that was creative and challenging, but the schedule was opposite of my husband’s since I had to work when he was home to take care of the kiddos, and I hated missing out on family time.

I had so much to be grateful for, and the guilt for wanting more was a heavy, recurrent theme. I had a beautiful family, a beautiful house, chickens, a horse, dogs, and nice vacations. Anything I wanted, within reason, wasn’t really out of my reach.

Yet, there was this voice that was telling me I wasn’t in the right place.

After the birth of my daughter, I struggled with postpartum depression and I had a relapse of my eating disorder. I had always vowed that I would never pass this horrible disease on to my kids, so I finally entered, and stuck with, treatment.

While eating-disordered thinking is something I’ll always need to be aware of, I made a full recovery, and I was starting to feel like I was on the right track. Still, I sensed that I hadn’t found my “more”.

The journey of finding myself was just beginning.

don’t ya love happy endings?

The Curveball

In July 2014 I discovered my husband of 17 years was gay. He had been having an affair with another man for 8 months and I had absolutely no clue anything out of the ordinary was happening in our marriage.

I was completely blindsided and the proverbial rug was pulled out from under me. My life as I knew it crumbled to pieces.

I was scared to death. I didn’t know what life without a “normal” family would look like. No one in my family had ever been divorced, and I never thought it would happen to me. I was going to lose my beautiful home and my family as I knew it. I worried about the effect it would have on my kids, and I was beyond worried about my financial future – I had given up a lucrative career to be a mom, I wasn’t all that interested in returning to a desk job, and photography wasn’t going to pay the bills.

I struggled with major depression and anxiety, and I felt like my life was over. I was faced with having to reinvent and rebuild my life and I didn’t even know who I was anymore, let alone what I wanted for my life. I didn’t feel that there would ever be a light at the end of the tunnel.

I had to find myself again.

There was so much rebuilding to be done. I had depended on my ex-husband for a long time, and even though I’m an intelligent and capable person, I had to rebuild my self-confidence. We sold our house and even though my ex had to co-sign, I rented a place of my own. I bought a car on my own and we found a way to put our differences (mostly) aside and co-parent effectively.

The internal journey that ensued was the most profound. I had lived so much of my life in fear of failing or looking like I didn’t have my shit together (Iearned that there is no such thing as failure and that there is certainly no shame in falling down). I didn’t know how to feel feelings without falling apart (I learned that feelings come and go and they are meant to be felt).

But perhaps the most epic journey was the one where I had to completely find out who I was again.

don’t ya love happy endings?

The Gifts in the Messes

Through this process, I found strength I never knew I had, and I began creating a new life.

What still hung in the balance was finding a career that was right for me. I wanted something that didn’t involve sitting behind a desk all day – the dreaded 9-5 hamster wheel just isn’t for me. Could I revitalize my photography business? I love photography, but I didn’t feel called to that. I knew what I really didn’t want, and that was to go back to a desk job.

Everything changed when I reconnected with a friend from engineering school who had become a coach. She opened my mind to a whole new world of following my own path to a career I loved. I started to look at the belief system I had about the “right” way to make a living – go to college, get a good job, work the 9-5, bust my ass for raises and promotions and then finally, someday retire. I started to envision a life where I could make my own rules and create new belief systems.

I began to see that I could actually design my life based on my own desires and values!

I hired a coach to help me figure it out. I had never thought about coaching as a career, but through my sessions with my coach, it became clearer and clearer that I was meant for this. Throughout my entire life, I had been creating my life based on what other people thought, and the thought of coaching others to let go of the expectations of others and write their own story lit me up.

I found the courage to go for it, even though I didn’t really have the money, and enrolled in a certification program. And here I am, a certified life coach, chomping at the bit to coach women along their journey of figuring out who they truly are, honoring themselves and going for what they really want in life.

I made it through my struggle, rewrote my story, and now I'm excited to help you rewrite yours.

Today, I am in love with my life. And who I am.

I feel grounded. I feel peace, ease, JOY, and I trust myself.

I connect with nature and feel inspired when I can breathe in fresh air and enjoy the gorgeous views that Mother Nature has given us.

I love who I am and I work every day on loving ALL of me. Even the squishy tummy and wrinkles and saggy skin that’s starting to show up as a woman in my 40s.

I’ve learned that we all can create whatever we desire in life. I believe this with all my heart.

But it all starts with self-love.

You’ve gotta love who you are – ALL of who you are. You can’t just pick and choose the easy parts to love. You have to love the parts that are hard to love too.

And when you can do that, you’ll find confidence in yourself and belief in what’s possible for you.

You’ll feel deserving of it and you’ll feel worth it.

You have all of the answers you need within you. You don’t need to look anywhere else – they’ve been with you all along. You just need to love the heck out of yourself in order to find them.

You are worthy.
You are enough.
Trust that and you will be unstoppable.

I can help you create that big life that you are meant to live.

Let’s take you from feeling stuck in your life, wondering how to find more happiness to feeling empowered to take control over creating a life that turns you on.

Want to talk about how we can work together?
Let’s Talk!

as seen in

In case you’re not tired of reading yet 🙃, here are some random fun facts about me:

What else do you wanna know?

My favorite food is homemade Neopolitan-style pizza. Yummm. Or smoked brisket. (Tough decision!)
My degree is in aerospace engineering. I worked at Boeing on the 777 flight test program. We got to go up on the aircraft flight tests. On one flight we got struck by lightning!
I worked as a sales rep in the craft beer industry for 5 years and I used to brew my own beer.
I’m a photographer (visit clickportraitart.com to see my work!)
I have my private pilot’s license.
I used to have a horse named Indy, but I had to sell him when I got divorced (horses are not cheap!). I did the hunter/jumpers with him.
I have two kids. Ages 12 and 19.
I was born and raised in Minnesota. Ya sure ya betcha!
My happy place is hiking on a gorgeous trail or out on the water on my SUP!
I help a lot of my clients love themselves through movement. Hiking, running, walking – whatever it is that brings them joy!