What does it mean to live, lead, and speak from a place of inner truth?
From growing up Quaker to navigating corporate burnout, Valerie shares her nonlinear path toward reclaiming agency, healing inherited patterns, and supporting others through meaningful transitions.
Valerie’s journey from corporate manager to life coach (and how her sociology, theater, and mediation background all led here)
What Quakerism taught her about discernment, truth, and connection
The art of taking up space—online and offline—even when it’s uncomfortable
Choosing Agency in a World That Profits from Our Disconnection
A conversation with coach, mediator, and quiet disruptor, Valerie Friedlander
Yay. Okay. I’m always happy when I hear that little recording sound — it’s like: all systems go.
I got to flip the script with someone I deeply respect: ICF Professional Certified Coach, mediator, facilitator, and somatic attachment healing practitioner, Valerie Friedlander.
We first connected over on her show, Mindset Unlimited, and now I got to pull her into my world, ask the questions, and let her be the one in the “tell us your story” chair.
We covered so much ground: Quaker mysticism, corporate ladders, kids, capitalism, invisible labor, and what it really means to have agency in a time where everything feels chaotic and compressed.
This is one of those conversations that doesn’t just inform you — it gently confronts you.
Who Is Valerie, Really? (Beyond the Bio)
Here’s the official version:
Valerie is an ICF professional certified coach who helps high-achieving women navigate professional transitions to build meaningful success on their terms. She also works with mission-driven organizations to support values-aligned leadership and create cultures where people can thrive.
With over a decade in private practice and training in mediation, facilitation, and somatic attachment healing, she offers grounded, compassionate support for living and leading with authenticity and courage. She’s also the host of the podcast Mindset Unlimited: tips, tools, and inspiration for women in a time of change.
Beautiful, right?
But as Valerie said — bios are polished. They’re useful. They signal what we do. But they don’t hold the whole story of who we are.
A bio doesn’t show:
the messy middle
the years of emotional work
the “I know this isn’t it, but I don’t know what is” feeling
the spiritual roots
the personal grief that shaped our boundaries
the invisible labor that no one sees but everyone benefits from
That’s where the rest of this conversation lives.
A Day in the Life: Work, Kids, and the Myth of “Balance”
When I asked Valerie what a day in her life looks like, she laughed at the word “balanced.”
Not because her life is chaotic in a bad way — but because “balance” is too neat a word for what is really more of a living mishmash:
supporting two growing kids who aren’t fully independent (but definitely not toddlers)
tending to the household
running a business
being visible enough so clients can find her
doing the deep one-on-one work with clients
and making space for her own body and spirit
Like many of us, her day is a constant dance between care work and paid work, between showing up for others and showing up for herself.
And she names something we don’t always want to admit:
“It’s hard to offer truly supportive services in a way that feels good when our entire society is conditioned to make decisions from pain points, urgency, and trauma — not from spaciousness and grounded discernment.”
So a “day in the life” for her isn’t just logistics. It’s also constant negotiation with:
capitalism
expectations
time
nervous system capacity
and the question: How do I do this work without replicating the harm I’m trying to help people heal from?
Movement, Nature, and Communing with the World Around You
One of my favorite things Valerie shared is deceptively simple:
She walks.
She moves her body.
She goes to sit by a small man-made lagoon in her neighborhood in Chicago.
She used to live near Lake Michigan and misses the waves, but now she finds her grounding by watching the life in this little body of water:
fish
birds
small creatures
shifting light
And she doesn’t just walk past people — she engages.
Recently, she noticed two women in hijabs with their kids standing by the water, pointing out fish. She asked how to say “fish” in Arabic. That turned into a conversation, sitting together, kids excitedly naming fish, talking about life and parenting. They shared tea with her — mint crushed into sweet black tea in small cups.
In that moment, she was communing with:
nature
her body
her neighbors
and something larger — the divine, the sacred, the interconnectedness we can easily forget in our scroll-and-grind world
That’s part of her daily medicine. Not the productivity hacks. The presence hacks.
The Quaker Roots: Waiting on the Light, Seeking Truth Together
A huge piece of Valerie’s story that I did not expect (but loved) is that she was raised Quaker — part of the Religious Society of Friends of Truth.
No, not Amish.
No, not Puritan.
No, not Shaker (though there are parallels).
In her tradition, there is:
no dogma-heavy doctrine, but a strong emphasis on direct experience
unprogrammed worship, where people sit together in silence and “wait upon the Spirit”
an expectation that truth can come through anyone in the room
a belief in “that of God” / light in every person
practices like speaking truth to power and letting your life speak
She explained something that really landed:
In Quaker practice, if you need clarity on a big decision, you don’t do it alone. You sit with others. They ask you questions. You listen together for the inner light, the truth. That process of discernment is core — and it’s deeply connected to how she coaches now.
Her work as a coach and facilitator is not some random professional choice. It’s a continuity of her spiritual upbringing:
helping people listen for truth inside themselves, in community, with courage.
From Alcoholism, Awareness, and 12-Step Tools… to Real Agency
Valerie grew up in a home impacted by alcoholism — and also by recovery.
Her parents entered 12-step programs when she was eight. She went to “Alakid” meetings designed for children in those environments.
She jokes that she was handed a toolbox as a kid — not just one emotional hammer — but:
“I only really knew how to use the hammer. I had all these sayings and awareness, but I didn’t know what to do with them.”
It wasn’t until college that she started her own healing in earnest:
seeing a therapist
going to Al-Anon
adult children of alcoholics meetings
learning how to communicate more honestly
practicing boundaries and healthier friendships
There’s this vivid moment she shared that feels like a pivot point:
She was in her car, listening to the Magnolia movie soundtrack (Amy Mann fans, this is your moment). Lyrics like:
“For the sake of momentum, I’ve allowed my fears to get larger than life…”
And she realized:
I don’t want to resonate with this anymore.
She wanted to stop being dragged through life by circumstance and start being an agent in her own story.
“It’s okay if I make a choice and later decide it wasn’t right. It’s okay if I change my mind. But I want to be the one choosing. I want to be an agent in my life.”
Shortly after that, she met the man who would become her husband. And she consciously practiced that agency — asking for time to think, noticing her patterns in relationships, choosing differently.
That same desire for agency later showed up in her career.
Corporate Ladder, “Success,” and the Moment of “This Isn’t It”
Fast forward a bit:
Valerie majors in Sociology, minors in Theater Arts
Moves to LA, tries the acting world, realizes the lifestyle and constant rejection aren’t aligned for her
Finds stability in administration
Climbs the corporate ladder
Becomes really good at people and operations
Gets a house in the suburbs
Has kids
Has the socially-approved markers of “success”
And yet:
“I wasn’t happy. I had done all the things — house, kids, career, marriage — and I didn’t feel how I thought I would feel when I arrived.”
What she realized:
She had been following a playbook she didn’t write
She had reached a “destination” that wasn’t actually hers
She knew she didn’t want to get rid of her kids, her husband, or the house
The only thing left to question was the job
So she started talking to people in different careers.
She remembered her mediation work from college.
She spoke to someone doing corporate coaching.
That conversation flipped a switch.
Coaching felt like:
people patterns (her sociology brain)
discernment and truth (her Quaker roots)
tools and awareness (her 12-step exposure)
communication and facilitation (her mediation training)
creativity and presence (her theater experience)
All in one.
“I realized: this is what I’ve been looking for. This is how I want to help people — not just fix problems, but support them in creating lives and a world that feel more aligned.”
Discomfort, Accountability, and Speaking Truth to Power
One of the most powerful parts of this conversation is how honest Valerie is about discomfort.
Not just emotional discomfort like “this is awkward,” but the real tension of:
calling out systems that are harmful
advocating inside public institutions
being labeled “the problem” when she’s naming the actual problem
using her time privilege and positional privilege to push for change
holding compassion for people acting from their own trauma — without taking responsibility for their behavior
She shared about showing up in her kids’ public school system:
seeing breakdowns in communication, a lack of transparency, and decisions made to families, not with them.
“I’m not causing the problem by naming it. I’m naming a problem that already exists. But we have this tendency, especially in systems that want to protect themselves, to shoot the messenger.”
She doesn’t see herself as a destroyer — she sees herself as a builder.
But sometimes, you can’t build what needs building without first naming what’s broken.
And that, for many of us (especially women and women of color), is deeply uncomfortable. We’ve been conditioned to:
keep the peace
make others comfortable
internalize the discomfort
not rock the boat
Valerie is actively practicing the opposite:
feeling the discomfort in her body
staying with it
speaking anyway
remembering: “If I’m calling it out, I didn’t create it.”
That’s a whole different kind of muscle.
Nonlinear Paths, Risk, and Redefining Visibility
We also talked about how nonlinear this journey really is.
You can have agency in one area (like relationships) and still be totally running on autopilot in another area (like career). You can be bold in your personal life and terrified to post about your podcast on LinkedIn. You can speak truth to power at school and still be negotiating what visibility feels safe online.
I shared how I recently decided to finally show up as my full self on LinkedIn — adding my podcast and my business into a space I’d previously kept “corporate-only.”
The fears are real:
Will this scare off future contract work?
Will I be seen as “too much”?
Will it close doors?
But so is this:
If I don’t see myself clearly, how can I expect others to?
If I’m straddling and hiding, I’m splitting my own energy.
If I want agency, I have to decide where and how I’m willing to be seen.
There’s no one right answer.
There’s just the question: What does agency look like for me, right now, in this season?
Media That Shapes Us: Lord of the Rings and Doing Your Part
At the end, I asked my favorite question:
What media — books, shows, movies, music — has shaped you?
For Valerie, one big one is The Lord of the Rings.
She quoted that iconic line:
“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”
That story mirrors so much of what we’d been talking about:
small people doing big things
each character having a part of the journey, not the whole thing
friendships across differences (Legolas and Gimli, anyone?)
calling someone back to themselves (like Gandalf with King Théoden)
choosing to act, even when you’re scared and tired
We don’t have to do everything.
We’re not responsible for every battle.
But we are responsible for our part.
What I Hope You Take from This Conversation
A few threads I hope stay with you:
Agency isn’t one big decision. It’s a series of small, honest choices in your body and your life.
You don’t have to be linear. Your path can loop, pause, spiral, and shift. That doesn’t make it wrong.
Discomfort is not always danger. It can be an invitation to grow, speak up, reclaim space.
You’re allowed to challenge systems. Naming a problem doesn’t make you the problem.
You need resourcing. Movement, nature, spiritual practice, therapy, coaching, community — something that feeds you.
You don’t have to do it alone. Discernment is more powerful in community.
Connect with Valerie
If you felt seen, challenged, or comforted by Valerie’s story, go spend more time in her world:
🌐 Website: ValerieFriedlander.com
🎧 Podcast: Mindset Unlimited
She works with high-achieving women in transition, as well as mission-driven organizations that want leadership and culture to actually match their values — not just their branding.
Thank you, Valerie, for your honesty, your courage, and your willingness to speak truth to power and truth to self.
And thank you for listening.
Until next time:
Take a breath. Take it easy. Hug yourself. Love yourself. Be well. 💜
