For as long as I can remember, I wanted to be a cardiac surgeon -- But life had other plans.

I remember going home after school on Thursday evenings counting down the hours until ER was on, having wayyy too much fun making an anatomical model of the human heart for my 7th grade health class, nerding out over online simulations of heart surgery procedures, and checking out books about heart surgeons from the library - My copy of King of Hearts, the True Story of the Maverick Who Pioneered Open Heart Surgery was full of bookmarks and highlights. I was sure I was going to be a surgeon and I couldn’t wait to fix broken hearts and help give people a second chance at life.

So when I failed my 11th grade Functions, Statistics, and Trigonometry class and my high school guidance counselor suggested I reconsider the pre-med route, I was crushed. I couldn’t picture myself doing anything other than being a surgeon, and even though I hadn’t truly lost anything, this shift in my identity was my first experience with needing to redefine my relationship with myself and reset the plan of who I always thought I was going to be.

On the way to drop me off at college, my mom said something I’ve never forgotten: “Sonja, you like to talk way too much to work on anesthetized patients all day.” She was so right - There’s no way I would have been happy or fulfilled stitching people up and sending them on their way. This subtle shift in my thinking helped me feel like giving up on my dream to be a surgeon was a choice, and that made all the difference as I figured out what came next. 

I decided to give up on the pre-med path and instead, I studied Health and Psychology. I loved learning about the connection between beliefs and behaviors, understanding the role of effective communication in community health, reading research about lifestyle disease, educating people about health conditions and behavior change, and seeing how subtle shifts in behaviors could lead to positive health outcomes in individuals, families, and communities.

When I learned about Health Coaching, I knew I had found my new professional purpose. I suddenly realized that instead of fixing broken hearts as a surgeon, my life’s work could be about helping prevent people from ever needing to have heart surgery in the first place.

This purpose carried me through the first several years of my career as a Health Coach. But after talking to hundreds of people about their cholesterol, blood pressure, triglycerides, weight, nutrition, and physical activity, I started to notice that while the conversations were outwardly focused on these metrics, there was always something a little bit deeper going on. Often when my clients figured out the details of their career, their health outcomes changed. Or when they started loving themselves, they moved their bodies more joyfully and purposefully. When they started valuing themselves and communicating more effectively within their relationships, they started engaging in healthier habits. When they reconnected to their sense of purpose, they started feeling happier. When they got in touch with their emotions, they processed loss with more meaning. When they started taking better care of themselves, they created lives they wanted to live. 

I’m still so grateful to the little girl who wanted to help fix broken hearts and I like to think I’ve made her proud. I never expected to find my passion and purpose within the heart of meaningful conversations, but I have no doubt that coaching is what I was always meant to do.

So let me ask you — have you ever grieved a dream you never got to see come true? What if something even better is waiting on the other side of that loss?

🤍 Sonja