19/05/2026
“How do we create spaces where people often processed through systems ⚙️ get to be fully human, even for an hour?”
I ran a group wellbeing coaching session this week for people living with HIV 🩺 It brought something into sharp focus that I see often in practice but don’t think we talk about enough 💡
Working with people managing complex health, this isn’t new.
But in this session, it was impossible to ignore 👇
We often design “evidence‑based” coaching interventions defining wellness 🌱using structured tools like the Permission Wheel 🔄 guided visualisation 🎯 And the tools themselves?
Here’s the tension 👇
The way we facilitate these approaches often assumes a baseline of stability, asking someone to define “wellness” when they are:
😴 exhausted
💔 grieving
🏠 unsure where they’ll be living next month
…isn’t a neutral question.
It can feel like being asked to describe a country you’ve never been allowed to visit 🌍🚫
And yet what consistently worked in the room wasn’t the tool.
It was the connection 🤝
You could feel the shift 💫
👥 People finding each other
💬 Real conversations
👀 Recognition
😂 Unexpected laughter
And (not) unexpectedly I got to bring a small part of myself into the space too 🎨🖍️ Poscas, Sharpies, Colour
It changed the energy more than I anticipated, the space feel more human, more open, more shared ✨
And it reinforced something I see again and again:
🩺 Chronic illness
💸 Financial insecurity
😫 Fatigue
💔 Bereavement
🧍♀️ Isolation
These aren’t barriers to coaching 👉 They are the work.
In contexts of significant instability or ongoing adversity 🌪️
the priority may shift from facilitating growth 🌱
→ to creating the conditions where growth is even possible 🌿
because people may not have capacity for traditional “growth” work in that moment. That’s not a small thing.
That is the intervention ✨
🌿
