courage · clarity · choice
Hi, I'm Jemma
and I've been fascinated by people and their interactions for as long as I can remember.
As a kid, I closely observed the adults and their relationships, especially the dynamics of my maternal grandparents' patriarchal marriage—troubling dynamics—seeing and feeling what authentic love is and isn't. My shyness often allowed me to be an invisible witness yet did not stop me from performing lively impressions of my grandparents interactions for my mother and her siblings nor from readily offering my take on what I saw—an affliction I still suffer from.
I was raised by a single mother—a feminist and skilled therapist— in a family where emotional intelligence, humor, and story-telling remain core values and the glue that bonds us. So, it's not all that surprising that I began prioritizing intimate relationships early—starting at the wise old age of 4—nor that I became a relationship coach...though I never saw that coming.
I spent the first half of my life focusing much of my time and energy—too much—on tending to my intimate relationships—lily padding from one to the next. I wholeheartedly believed what we're all told; romantic love is the ticket to happiness, security, fulfillment, healing, and the place where we learn the most about ourselves. Spoiler alert: It's not.
What I know for sure after nearly 50 years of intimate relationships is that much of what we believe about love is not the truth or at least not the whole truth. Society, culture, and family shape us to play roles in our relationships which hold us back from authentic love and from honoring ourselves. I learned that even when the odds are stacked in your favor—a partner who's kind, shares financial, household, and childcare responsibilities and speaks the same EQ language (he too was raised by a couple's therapist)—a 20 year marriage carefully cultivated with mutual respect, kindness, and a decent foundation of effective communication and conflict navigation can still unravel, following the same "break-up script" that ends marriages lacking in mutual respect and kindness.
I couldn't find anyone speaking about what I was experiencing in my marriage—being with a nice guy yet feeling unfulfilled, alone, confused, and stuck—the slow and quiet crumbling of my dreams and all I knew. This is what lit the fire in me to share my story of leaving a nice guy along with what I've learned during my coaching career by posting on TikTok—my first video touched a collective nerve as it immediately went viral with over 4.6 million views.
Giving myself permission to leave what I'd been told my whole life to want: a marriage to a good man, grieving what I lost, reclaiming parts of me I'd abandoned, and creating a life I never expected to be living has been as liberating as it initially was terrifying. Choosing to be with myself has given me the time and space to awaken to and detox from limiting cultural messages, to get to know who I am beyond the relationship roles I've been playing, and to understand just how valuable it is for each of us to identify and evolve the personal relationship template that determines the quality of the love we experience.
MY COACHING PROCESS IS ROOTED IN MY LIVED EXPERIENCE, MY INTUITION & TRAINING FROM WORLD-RENOWNED EXPERTS:
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Coaching Certification—Lumia
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Developmental Model Certification—The Couples Institute
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Healing Attachment Wounds—Diane Poole Heller, Trauma Solutions
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Healing Men From Patriarchal Conditioning—Terry Real, Relational Life Institute
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Self-Compassion—Center for Mindful Self-Compassion
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Sessions—Esther Perel
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Somatic Healing Practices—Diane Poole Heller w/ Peter Levine, Trauma Solutions
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Interpersonal Neurobiology—Dan Siegel, Mindsight Institute