When Tilly Stevens was a teenager, her grandmother died in front of her. She went to school the next day wanting to talk about it, and found that none of her friends knew what to say – or wanted to try. That silence has shaped almost everything she’s done since. Today, based in Ōtautahi Christchurch, Tilly is a PREKURE-trained Mental Health Coach whose work with people facing serious illness, caregiving and bereavement shows that health coaching doesn’t only belong in gyms and GP clinics – it belongs wherever people are trying to live well, even while facing death. Before training as a Mental Health Coach, Tilly had already spent years building the foundations for this work. She trained as an end-of-life doula, worked in grief education in schools, ran loss and grief programmes for both children and adults, and raised two children of her own. Looking back, none of it was a detour. “I guess I’ve always been really interested in that,” she says of sitting with people through loss. “Before mental health coaching, I trained to be an end-of-life doula. I worked in the space of grief education in schools, working with children, loss and grief programmes, and also working with adults in that space.” What drew Tilly toward coaching specifically was a pattern she kept seeing: grief that goes unacknowledged doesn’t disappear – it becomes entangled with mental health. “I’ve become a mental health coach because I was working in the space of loss and grief, and I just see so much of the unacknowledged grief that then becomes entangled with mental health,” she explains. Coaching gave her a way to formalise what she’d already been doing instinctively for years: offering people a space to talk about the things everyone else finds too uncomfortable to sit with. Now, through her practice It All Matters, Tilly supports people navigating serious and terminal illness, and just as importantly – supports the people caring for them. Her work spans one-on-one coaching, mostly delivered over Zoom so she can work with clients anywhere in the country, alongside community workshops on end-of-life planning conversations, funeral poverty (Death Without Debt), and mental health and wellbeing more broadly. People tend to find her rather than the other way around. “Most people are coming to me when they are experiencing some kind of loss,” she says. A particular focus of Tilly’s coaching is supporting the supporters. Caregiving is often a long trajectory, and the research is clear about the cost: within a few years of caring for someone who has died, caregivers’ own health and wellbeing has frequently been severely compromised. “They’re often supporting the supporters,” Tilly says, “because their mental health – you know, they can’t look after their person if they’re not well.” Coaching in this space means helping caregivers navigate their loved one’s illness while also protecting their own wellbeing, something that so often gets put second, third or fourth. Ask Tilly what a mental health coach actually does, and she reaches for a simple description: a thought partner. “Somebody who supports you in your journey. A safe place for you to sometimes air some things that often your mates don’t want to be hearing all the time,” she says. “Nobody needs to fix anything. Just to be alongside someone and offer a space – which I think is what coaching is. Listening and being alongside people on their journeys is a massive part of coaching.” For Tilly, PREKURE’s Advanced Certificate in Mental Health Coaching has been the piece that finally brought everything together. Alongside her Diploma in Positive Psychology and Wellbeing, her end-of-life doula training, her study in thanatology, and her work with Dr Lucy Hone and the Coping with Loss Community, the coaching qualification gave her both a clearer sense of direction and the confidence that what she’d been building was real. “Sometimes it feels like a bit of a lonely road when you have an idea or vision, but you’re not really sure if it’s a ‘thing,'” she reflects. “For me, this gives me the courage and confidence that I am on the right track.” Tilly’s story is a reminder that health coaching isn’t confined to any one setting or life stage – it can meet people in the hardest, most human moments there are, and help them feel less alone in them. You can read more of Tilly’s reflections, including what works for wellbeing at end of life, at itallmatters.co.nz.
Inspired by Tilly’s story? Find out more about becoming a PREKURE-certified Health Coach.
Inspired by Tilly’s story? Find out more about becoming a PREKURE-certified Health Coach.
