Leela Ehrhart
Coach + Writer
Something in your life no longer quite fits, and you’re not sure what comes next.
Maybe an explanation you once relied on as a framework for your life has stopped making sense. Maybe you've outgrown a role, an identity, or a way of living. Or maybe nothing dramatic has happened, but you know you want something different, even if you aren't yet sure what that looks like.
You don't have to know exactly what comes next to begin questioning old assumptions, making different choices, and seeing what happens.
What comes next?
You’re given all kinds of explanations your entire life by parents, teachers, doctors, and others for who you are, and how you’re supposed to heal, change, succeed, and live. Some of them help you make sense of our experiences and find your way through difficult things. But sometimes a framework that once served you begins to feel more constraining than useful. Something that once organized your life stops working, or you begin to question if what you have is what you really want.
Maybe you've spent years focused on healing or recovering from something. Maybe you've built your life around a role, a responsibility, an expectation, or an idea of what you thought you wanted. Whatever the circumstances, there comes a point when it can be worth asking some different questions. What do you actually want now? What have you outgrown? What are you still doing because you choose it, and what are you doing simply because it’s familiar? What might you try if you didn't need to know ahead of time exactly where it would lead?
I've become increasingly skeptical of universal formulas for how people are supposed to heal, change, succeed, or live. I'm more interested in what happens when we question what we've been handed, pay attention to our own experience, and begin doing things differently. Sometimes clarity comes through action. Sometimes the only way to find out what's possible is to participate in creating something different, something new.
That's the orientation I bring to my writing and to my work with people.
Coaching
I work one-to-one with people who know they want to do something differently, even if they aren't yet sure what that looks like.
Sometimes something significant has changed. Sometimes nothing dramatic has happened, but you know that a way of doing things has run its course. You may be facing a decision, circling something you haven't yet acted on, or realizing that you don't want to keep living the way you've been living.
Together we can look closely at what's actually happening, question assumptions you may have stopped noticing, or simply taken for granted out of habit, and gain clarity about what you want. Then we can ask what you might actually do differently and see what that teaches you.
There's room for reflection, uncertainty, and not knowing. The work also has to meet your actual life. That might mean making a decision, trying something, having a conversation, changing what you do, or seeing what happens when you stop waiting to feel completely certain.
We can begin before you know exactly where you're going. What matters is being willing to try something, pay attention to what happens, and take it from there.
Individual sessions are 60–75 minutes and cost $250. Packages are offered on a limited basis and start at $600. I sometimes customize longer-term arrangements when it makes sense.
A free course on meaning + purpose
When something in your life has shifted, or stopped fitting, or you feel lost in an alien world, it can be difficult to know what matters to you anymore, or what you want to do with yourself and your life.
This free six-week course offers a place to begin exploring those questions.
Each week, I'll send you a short video introducing an idea, along with something to try or to consider in your own life. We'll look at what can happen when you stop waiting to have everything figured out and begin engaging with these questions differently.
The course isn't six weeks to find your purpose. It's a place to begin: to work with some new ideas, to try some different ways of participating in your life, and see what you learn from there.
Writing
I publish essays at This, For Now. about the things I think are worth looking at more closely.
That might begin with something in my own life, a system I want to understand, a question I can't quite leave alone, or something I often see in others. I'm interested in getting underneath the easy explanations, questioning what we think we know, and seeing what else might be there.
The writing is for anyone who wants to look more closely at their own life and the world around them, and see what they find.
About
For a long time, much of my life and work revolved around psychiatric drugs and withdrawal. I started taking psychiatric drugs when I was young, and eventually spent years slowly tapering off them. That experience changed the way I thought about a lot of things I had previously taken for granted: mental health, healing, expertise, authority, and how much any of us can really know about what's right for someone else.
It also eventually became my work. I spent years alongside people who were tapering off of psychiatric drugs, going through withdrawal, or trying to make sense of what had happened to them after being harmed, failed, or poorly served by the mental health system. That experience remains part of how I see the world and part of the work I do.
I have a BS in Psychology and an MA in Professional Counseling, though the work I do now is not therapy or medical care. I have worked one-to-one with people as a coach and consultant, built communities, written publicly, and created resources.
Over time, my attention expanded beyond psychiatric drugs, withdrawal, and recovery to a broader set of questions about how we understand ourselves and our lives, what happens when those understandings change, and what becomes possible when we begin doing things differently. Those are questions I continue to explore through my writing, my work with people, and my own life.