Elizabeth Perlman

I am a Youth Empowerment Coach for teens + twentysomethings. I support young people in navigating the complex challenges of high school, college, and early adulthood, from finding their voice to finding their way, reclaiming their power as the authors and hero/ines of their own life story.
I believe the answers we seek are inside us and
how we tell our story is how we live our life.

BEING YOUNG
Some of the most radical change happens between the age of 13 and 29—and yet there is no roadmap or guidebook for the confusing, rapid-fire transition from teen to adult. First, there is the all-consuming challenge of proving yourself—checking off all the boxes—to get into a good college. But then, once you graduate from college, it can feel like being thrown in the deep end before you’ve learned to swim.
For some reason, we assume that “everything will sort itself out” once a young person gets into college, with very few little support for anyone on the other side of college graduation. As a result, many of us (including me, once upon a time) spend our twenties swimming in circles, unsure of who we are or where we’re going. But what if it could be easier? What if you could discover your strengths, connect to your intuitive guidance, and get clear about the kind of life you want live—with practical tools for making it happen?

EMPOWERMENT COACHING + HOW IT CAN HELP
While therapy is invaluable for the healing and recovery process, empowerment coaching is about self-discovery and self-invention, reconnecting to who you really are and making choices that align with your greater purpose. (And yes, we all have a greater purpose, which is something I can help you uncover, as well.)
Empowerment coaching begins with the assumption that you are already a powerful, amazing, incredibly creative human being, born with your own unique combination of talents, strengths, and gifts, gifts the world needs—and only you can express.
My job, as your coach, is just to help you reconnect to the magic that already exists inside of you—that has always existed inside of you—to cultivate self-awareness, self-trust, and self-confidence. (The reason I have made this my job is because my unique gift is the ability to see the unique gifts in others.) It all starts with self-reclamation, reclaiming your power as the author, protagonist, and director your own life story.
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When we don’t know who we are or what we want, we are easily sidetracked—pulled down incompatible paths with incompatible people—like secondary characters in someone else’s movie. But when we connect to who we are—when we find our authentic voice and discover our unique talents, strengths, values, and interests—we reclaim our power as the authors and hero/ines of our own lives. Then we can consciously choose the friends, the activities, the classes, the colleges, the majors, the internships, the partners, and the careers that will celebrate and support our uniqueness, imbuing us with a sense of being valued, needed and connected to something greater. Most importantly, when have a clear sense of who we are, we are connected to our own intuitive wisdom—our own internal GPS—which gives us the confidence and clarity we need to create an authentic, connected, meaningful, and very fulfilling life.

WHY I DO THIS WORK
To paraphrase Ayesha Siddiqi, I am here to be the person I needed when I was young.
As a teen and then throughout my twenties, I really struggled. Everything felt overwhelming and nothing made any sense. I remember feeling lost, confused, depressed, and hopelessly inadequate. It was writing in a journal every night that kept me sane and got me through it. But now, after decades of therapy, I wish I had had someone like me to talk to, a long time ago. That’s why I started The Intuitive Writing Project, to create a safe space for teens to speak and be heard, to tell their story and find their voice. It’s also where I cultivated my coaching method, integrating the life-restoring kindness of the Amherst Writing Method with a life time of personal study and self-recovery work, exploring the connection between creative and intuitive development and the principles of transformative personal growth.
For the past 12 years, I have been working exclusively with teens and 20-somethings. They are “my people.” And whether I'm leading groups or working one-on-one, I believe this is "my soul work," the work I was born to do. I am here to bear witness, to reflect back the unique magic and power I see in each person, and to support everyone in their own self-reclamation process. My job is just to ask a lot of questions and mirror back your own magic, shining a light on your brilliance till you can see it, too.
For me, I dream of a world in which we are all empowered to love, trust and express our most authentic selves, a world in which everyone is taken care of and everyone can thrive.

MY PHILOSOPHY
We are all storytellers. Everything we think, say, and believe is a story. But some of our stories are less empowering than others. Without realizing it, a lot of the stories we tell ourselves—silently, in our heads—can be quite painful and limiting. (I know this all too well.) It is through writing—and then sharing our words with a compassionate witness—that we "break the spell" of old, outdated stories, connecting to our unique talents and strengths and creating the life we’ve always wanted to live.
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Whatever you're struggling with, whatever you want more clarity on, this kind of coaching can help. Through both talking and expressive writing (which includes list-making, cathartic rants and whatever you get to get off your chest!), I will lead you through a playful, creative process of reconnection: reclaiming your intuitive wisdom and rediscovering your own authentic voice. (Your wisdom and power has always been there! It's just that most of us have been trained to doubt or discount it.) The magic of the process comes from the fact that the answers are always inside of us—and we find them when we write.

Empowerment Coaching
Find your voice. Tell your story.
We are all born with our own voice, our own talents, and our own unique greatness. Unfortunately, by the time we're 13, most of us have been so criticized, shamed, and discouraged, we lose all faith in ourselves. But because we are storytellers, we make up stories about it. The way we internalize other people's judgments is to tell ourself the story that they must be "right" and we must be "wrong." These stories are also called self-limiting beliefs. These beliefs can feel like "facts" we cannot change—until we share them with a compassionate listener who can help us examine them more closely, to question their veracity, and to discover our own truth, for ourselves. As e.e. cummings once wrote,“We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us something is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch."
As I often tell my teens, I am not here to teach them or tell them what to do. I believe we are all the experts of our own heart and that my job is just to support each person in re-connecting to what they already know—their own intuitive wisdom—and then to help them build the resilience to stay connected, to develop the inner-authority and self-trust they'll need to grow and thrive.
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Rate: $100/hour or $270 for 3 sessions
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To schedule a free consultation call for yourself or your child, email me here.

Career Coaching
Discover your strengths. Find your path.
“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive—and then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive!” — Harold Thurman
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Because it took me over twenty years to find my own path, I have spent a lot of time reading career books, working with career counselors, and journaling about the big, existential questions: who am I, why am I here, what are my strengths, and how can I use my strengths in service to others? In the process, I developed a series of self-empowering tools I love to share with anyone who's seeking more clarity or focus in their lives.
In this work, I draw upon wisdom from The Myers Briggs Type Indicator, The Enneagram, The VIA Institute on Character Strengths Test, Brene Brown’s “Dare To Lead” List of Values, The Clifton StrengthsFinder 2.0, The Seven Personality Archetypes by Dr. Elizabeth Puttick, What Color Is Your Parachute? by Richard N. Bolles, and various creative writing prompts, including questions about what you loved to play (and why) when you were a kid and expressing your most authentic nature. Most importantly, I use my empathy and intuition to help each person recognize and "own" their unique talents and strengths and how they want to use them.
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Rate: $100/hour or $270 for 3 sessions
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To schedule a free consultation call for yourself or your child, email me here.

College + Grad School Essay Coaching
Tell your story in a powerful way.
Essay coaching is about empowering each student to find their own authentic voice. I am able to do this by creating a safe, encouraging space for sharing and self-reflection. Then I mirror back what I hear, affirming each person's unique strengths and values as the heroes and heroines of their own life story. In this way, I am able to focus on the qualities colleges and universities value most including independent thought, self-awareness, emotional resilience, social intelligence, and personal leadership.
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This kind of essay coaching is about helping the writer think creatively and strategically about the most important experiences of their life—and then how to tell their story in a brave, inspiring way. Ultimately, my focus is on supporting writers holistically, to help each student speak their truth and feel confident about who they are and where they're headed.
I am proud to say that every student who’s written with me has been accepted into one of their first-choice undergrad and grad schools, including Columbia, Yale, Brown, Northeastern, Northwestern, Tufts, the University of Michigan, USC, UCLA, UC Santa Barbara, UC Santa Cruz, UC San Diego, UC Berkeley, Cal Poly, NYU, Rutgers, Haverford, Smith, Bryn Mawr, American University, Duke, and Harvard Law School.Truly, a well-told story can change your life.
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During the first session, we talk through, outline, and complete a first draft of the personal essay, which usually takes two hours.
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Subsequent sessions (especially with supplemental essays) can usually be completed in one hour.
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Rate is $150 per hour.
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Edits and revisions are offered via Google docs for FREE!
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The pace of our meetings will be determined by the writer.
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To schedule a free consultation call, email me here.