ABOUT WENDY
What I studied
For more than 25 years, I studied identity and behavior as a political scientist at the University of Minnesota—how the groups, roles, and stories we claim shape what we notice, feel, and do.
Again and again, I returned to the same question: How does being influence doing? I explored it through research on political actions, civic obligations and youth turnout.
At the time, I thought I was studying how citizens with different identities respond to opportunities to participate. It turns out the question was surprisingly portable. Years later, it followed me out of academia and into a very different chapter of my life.
What I built
I diagnosed with breast cancer in November 2006. Because I was a researcher, I did what came naturally: I put my nose in the journals.
What I found convinced me that exercise after cancer could make a meaningful difference, and I came to believe that women deserved a place to rebuild strength with people who understood what they were going through. Through community and regular physical activity, women could begin to see themselves differently: not just as patients, but as strong, capable survivors.
That vision drove me to found, in 2007, Survivors' Training, a non-profit. We opened Survivors' Studio 6 months later.
Cancer also gave me permission to rethink some priorities and take a risk. As I said in an interview at the time:
"What's the worst that could happen to you – have cancer? Well, I already have cancer!"
Survivors' Studio became a place of serious work, plenty of conversation, and quite a bit of laughter.
What Came Later
Life keep supplying new material.
There was caregiving for elderly parents, retirement, a later ADHD diagnosis, and a long, frustrating effort to change my own relationship with alcohol.
I understood a great deal about behavior. My own habits were not especially impressed by my credentials, however. I made plans, set rules, gathered information, and kept trying to outthink the problem on my own.
Eventually, I had to accept that trying harder by myself was not working. I needed to do something different, and so I began working with a coach.
What I Learned
Coaching gave me something I had not been able to provide for myself: accountability, a safe place to tell the truth, and enough room to let go of the shame I had carried for years.
The support helped me stop treating alcohol as a behavior I was endlessly trying to control. I began building a different identity: I am someone who no longer needs alcohol in my life. I am alcohol free.
At first, the identity felt more like a hypothesis than a fact. Then my actions began supplying the evidence and made the new identity seem more believable. Over time I became someone for whom not drinking was the default choice, not something that had to be negotiated every evening.
This experience linked my academic work with my own life. I became certified as coach myself.
These foundations provided the basis for the
Being-Doing-Living Method™.
Identity shapes action.
Doing provides evidence.
Evidence becomes the way you live.
How I Work Now
We take stock of the pattern, look closely at what it is doing for you, and test changes that fit your actual life—not an imaginary week when you are rested, organized, and mysteriously eager to do every sensible thing.
I bring research, lived experience, plain talk, and a bit of humor to the work. I will not hand you a prefab answer or pretend change is effortless. No dramatic reinvention or a 5 a.m. green-smoothie identity required. We look at the evidence, learn what works, and keep recalculating.
I can see the person you are becoming.
Let's cross the bridge to meet you on the other side.
