Hi, I'm Elli Smith,
and I believe the old structures are crumbling so something more alive can take their place.
I’m a dream designer, creative instigator, and a heart coach. I believe in the power of imagining and the pleasure of returning to what is.
Most of the women I work with have built a life around what they thought they should do.
They know what they don’t want. They’re still finding the words for what they do.
Something in them has gone numb, or maybe just burnt out. The paths we were told would lead to happiness and success were never built to last, and walking them for years wears a person down.
Everything is changing fast right now. The old ways of being need reinvention, and there’s a lot of fresh living and thinking rising up to meet that. I am part of that movement. And you are too?
Some part of them knows it’s time to cross a threshold, even if they can’t yet see what’s on the other side. If you can feel the change coming but don’t know how to step into it, that’s where deep listening, creative practice, and mirroring from a coach can be transformative. I will hold your hand, and we’ll walk through the waterfall together.
I know her. She’s not a stranger to me. She’s a version of me at a very specific moment.
I know the woman who’s stuck but doesn’t want to admit it. I know the woman who’s numb and doesn’t know how to feel. And I know the woman who has sat in something toxic too long and isn’t sure how to get out.
Before I was a coach...
I’ve always loved exploring, internal and external worlds.
I studied Art History at Berkeley, then Arts in Education at Harvard. For over twenty years, I’ve mentored and worked creatively with people of all ages. Making films and podcasts, with Native communities in the Pacific Northwest and in post-Katrina New Orleans schools. Hundreds of hours spent learning and growing together through creative and documentary work.
In addition to academia and field work, I’ve been certified both as a heart coach and through the Feminine Frequency Business School, a program that blends business strategy with feminine leadership.
What I Believe, Standing Here Right Now
Creativity bubbles out of us before anyone teaches us to be careful with it.
Somewhere along the way, the grooves of life subdue that instinct. But I feel the urgency for change can be met with the creative calm of a practiced individual: the world we can imagine is the world we will make.
This Earth is a gorgeous garden of delight, and we’re lucky to be alive right now, stressors and all. The old structures are crumbling. In that space, the seeds we plant today will grow. That’s where my interest lives: seeding the future with our imagination and standing in our fullness to witness our dreams manifest.
My Approach
Creative
Drawing the Unconscious. What the hand reveals before the mind agrees to say it out loud.
Embodied
Coaching from the body first. Somatic before strategic.
Relational
Building the bridge, not the argument. Collective becoming over individual optimization.
Spiritual
Deep spirituality to a danceable beat. Reverence without heaviness. Connection to something greater, or simply to the world right around you.
Creative
Drawing the Unconscious. What the hand reveals before the mind agrees to say it out loud.
Embodied
Coaching from the body first. Somatic before strategic.
Spiritual
Deep spirituality to a danceable beat. Reverence without heaviness. Connection to something greater, or simply to the world right around you.
Relational
Building the bridge, not the argument. Collective becoming over individual optimization.
Life Beyond the Work
Most days you’ll find me trying to find a cozy corner somewhere on the West Coast, in nature, or, let’s face it, on somebody’s couch. I’m currently writing poems under the name humanmoonbeam on Substack, which I hope to eventually publish.
I love nature, animals, my family, and my friends. I love to laugh. I’m working on a one-woman show, and on a book of poems and meanderings. I love to eat, snacks very much included. I love to dance. And I am delighted, genuinely delighted, by the small things: tiny flowers, mini dachshunds, little creatures going about their little lives.
I believe we are building the future right now, actively, with our choices and our creativity and our willingness to go past comfortable. Nature is magnificent. Be your nature. The world needs your wildness.