Helping you break the cycle
Compassionate coaching and advocacy for women transcending from survival to recovery
About
Mission
Women in My Corner℠ offers practical coaching and impassioned advocacy for women who have survived abuse (sexual, psychological, etc.), and are looking for someone to walk beside them as they transition to their next chapter with confidence, peace, and power.
My Background
Hello, I'm Dr. Christine Andrews, and I founded Women in My Corner℠ to fill gaps I noticed when I started my own recovery. I believe that recovery is a lifelong journey, but victimhood is something you can put behind you with the right support. I'm recovering from abuse that began in childhood and laid the groundwork for me to repeat it over and over. I'm determined to break the cycle for me and the generations that follow. One of the keys to my recovery has been having incredible women in my corner. Now, I want to pay it forward.
I'm certified in trauma-informed coaching, and I am a Certified Financial Education Instructor℠. I am a Ph.D. social scientist researcher who has loved working with clients since 1990. My paraprofessional experience began in college at a women's shelter, a women's health clinic, and a crisis hotline. As an advocate, I am using my rediscovered power to fight against the sexual and economic exploitation of women. I want to help abuse victims take their power back so they can break their own generational cycles.
Why Coaching?
When I was going through a traumatic divorce in 2023, I cobbled together a solid team to support me and my young adult children. The team included individual therapy, support groups, Al-Anon Family Groups, and individual coaching.
Coaching is not the same as therapy, but for me, they were both necessary and complementary. Therapy was essential to helping me recover from PTSD, and it helped me begin the process of healing myself. Coaching gave me a place to ask questions, vent to someone besides my friends who couldn’t always relate (or were likely tired of listening to me!), and get valuable advice from women who had walked in my shoes.
If I had to give one piece of advice to a woman attempting to exit the abuse cycle, it would be this: Get yourself a team of people, beyond your friends and family, to support you. It doesn’t have to cost money. Some help is free. But your friends and family can only provide so much support. While it is enormously helpful to have their support, sometimes their advice, even if it’s well-meaning, can be uninformed and may do more harm than good. If you are getting divorced, I also strongly advise against leaning on your lawyers for emotional support. It’s simply too expensive and can distract them from finalizing your separation agreement.
In short, coaching is a great way to supplement the support you are getting from a therapist or counselor, self-help groups like Al-Anon, your lawyer, and others.
Is Recovery Really Possible?
While the life coaches and divorce coaches I’ve worked with in the past have been helpful, they didn’t always quite understand the source of some of my internal challenges. That’s not a criticism of those coaches, but it revealed a gap in the services I was able to find. I’ve worked as hard as I possibly could over the past decade to heal myself. I believe all my hard work has paid off.
I trust myself now. I see my value and worth, and my inner critic is now instead a gentle guide. I can finally envision an end to the generational trauma in my family for me and my kids. Along the way, I am enjoying rediscovering myself and learning how to live fully and authentically in the present moment.
Furthermore, I no longer keep dark secrets or carry emotional burdens for people who use or abuse me. I no longer make excuses for people who lie, manipulate, and bully others. I no longer live my life the way other people want me to. I no longer enable other people's addictions. I no longer walk on eggshells or keep my body clenched, bracing for the unknown.
My goal for the second half of my life is to learn to navigate those forces that pull at each of us. You know, the ones that try to suck you back into the unhealthy dynamics of a family or a friendship or a workplace? You can almost set your clock by it—as soon as you feel like your head is above water and you're getting good at enforcing your boundaries—boom!—one of the broken people or their enablers is pulling at you, trying to convince you to jump back into your old role.
If you've been on a similar path, you know how hard it is to emerge on the other side, only to feel like you are walking alone into the abyss. It's peaceful and calm, but connecting with others who've walked the same path is sometimes challenging. Ultimately, I hope to build a community of women who have managed to put a safe distance between themselves and the broken people in their lives, have learned to love and trust themselves, and are now looking for connections with other women who are determined to be the last ones in their family tree to face what they've survived.
If that sounds like a journey you'd like to join, welcome along!
Services
Please remember that coaching services are not a replacement for therapy. In fact, before being enrolled in a group coaching session, I strongly encourage clients to work with a therapist, if they haven't already.
All of our coaching is currently online only. We hope to offer in-person meetings in the future.
Full Group Coaching
Full group coaching meetings are two hours each. They are held weekly for eight weeks in a row. Our typical schedule looks like this:
Session A: Eight weekly sessions beginning in early January
Session B: Eight weekly sessions beginning in early March
Session C: Eight weekly sessions beginning in early May
Session D: Eight weekly sessions beginning in early July
Session E: Eight weekly sessions beginning in early September
Session F: Eight weekly sessions beginning in early November {Enrolling now!]
Each woman who expresses an interest in becoming a group coaching member will be invited to participate in a 20-minute enrollment interview before being enrolled. We will attempt to assign participants to groups based on shared experiences. For example, one 8-week session may cover a specific topic like “supporting adult children of divorce,” so the participants assigned to that group would probably all be mothers recovering from divorce.
No more than 10 coaching clients are invited to each session so that participants can fully participate.
To express your interest in our confidential, full group coaching services, please click here.
For women who prefer more individualized support, we also offer small group and one-to-one (1:1) coaching.
Small Group Coaching
Small group coaching is for groups of no more than three members. Small group coaching allows for a more intensive experience. Small group coaching sessions follow a similar schedule to that of the full group coaching sessions listed above.
To express your interest in our confidential, small group coaching services, please click here.
One-to-one (1:1) Coaching
1:1 coaching is available on a flexible schedule, in 50-minute blocks. Discounts are offered for bulk purchases of six sessions or more.
To express your interest in our confidential, 1:1 coaching services, please click here.
Speaking Engagements
One of my mantras is sanity over secrets™.
We can't truly break generational cycles of abuse until we stop keeping secrets. Dysfunction and toxicity thrive on secrets. Secrets enable abusers to continue destroying their victims because they learn they can get away with almost anything, and no one will hold them accountable. Secrets demoralize victims because when victims are prevented from discussing their abuse, they feel shame and responsibility for their own abuse, forcing them to continue suffering in silence. Secrets are the fuel that keeps the cycle of abuse churning.
A big step for me in my healing has been releasing some of those secrets; I am finally speaking out about what happened to me. I have so many valuable lessons to share about the impacts of sexual, psychological, and other forms of violence, ways to heal, and how to (and how not to) support loved ones who have been victimized.
I’m available for speaking engagements or training sessions of all sizes. Please click here to let me know how I can help you and your organization.