Leah Gniwesch, PhD

Scotland reminded me of something I often forget.

We spend so much of life trying to see the entire path before we’re willing to take the next step.

Nature doesn’t work that way.

Trails curve.
Mountains hide what’s ahead.
The weather changes.

Yet somehow, one step is enough.

In a few days, I’ll be heading to Vietnam for my next adventure, carrying this lesson with me.

Sometimes you don’t need more certainty.
You just need enough courage for the next step.

In a few days I’ll be working from Vietnam.

I’m looking forward to slowing down, being surrounded by beauty, and seeing what new ideas emerge.

Sometimes changing your environment changes your thinking.

Some creations outlive the people who made them by thousands of years.

Today, walking through the British Museum, I found myself asking one simple question:

What are you building that will outlast you?

One thing I’ve learned is that restoration isn’t a luxury—it’s fuel. A walk through Hampstead Heath, a wonderful lunch, and I feel like myself again.

Today I am thinking about two men whose yahrzeits fall one day apart.

Yesterday was my father’s yahrzeit.

Today is the yahrzeit of the Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson.

Although they were very different people, they shared something powerful in common: they both taught me to think bigger about what is possible.

My father lived with the conviction that if something needed to be learned, built, fixed, or accomplished, it could be done. He didn’t spend much time talking about limitations. He looked for possibilities.

The Rebbe spent his life reminding people that they were capable of far more than they imagined. Again and again, he challenged people to stop focusing on what they lacked and start focusing on the gifts, strengths, and opportunities they had been given—and then use them to bring more light into the world.

Looking back, I realize how much both of these influences shaped my work.

As a coach, I spend my days helping people recognize strengths they have overlooked, abilities they have forgotten, and potential they have not yet fully claimed.

Every time someone discovers that they are more capable than they thought, I hear echoes of both of these men.

May their memories continue to be a blessing.

And may we all be reminded that we are capable of more good, more growth, and more impact than we often realize.

What actually makes a person strong?

Not control.
Not certainty.

The ability to steady yourself—
even when everything around you feels unsteady.

To choose your response instead of reacting.
To access your clarity, your strength, your goodness—especially under pressure.

That kind of independence isn’t given.
It’s built.

And it’s available to each and every one of us.

This is the work I get to witness every day—
people discovering that they already have so much more inside them than they realized,
and learning how to live from that place.

My prayer this Yom HaAtzmaut is that we continue to grow into that strength—
as individuals, and as a people.

Yom HaAtzmaut Sameach 🇮🇱

Yom HaShoah is not abstract for me.

My father was a Holocaust survivor.
His parents were murdered in Auschwitz when he was still a child.

I didn’t grow up learning about the Holocaust.
I grew up with someone who carried it.

He was an eyewitness to history that people now question, distort, and even deny.

And that does something unsettling—
not only globally, but psychologically.

Because when truth is repeatedly denied, people begin to doubt what is real.
They lose trust in their own perception.
They become ungrounded.

I see this in my work all the time.

People come in disconnected from themselves—
not because they are broken,
but because somewhere along the way, their inner knowing was overridden.

By louder voices.
By repeated narratives.
By pressure to question what they know.

Coaching, at its core, is about restoring that connection.

Not to the loudest story—
but to the most honest one.

This is what I see.
This is what I know.
This is who I am.

My father didn’t just survive.
He carried truth forward—at a cost most of us cannot fully understand.

And today, that responsibility doesn’t disappear.

We honor the past not only by remembering—
but by refusing distortion.

Outside of us.
And within us.

The “Changing Your Story About Money” workshop scheduled for next week at Finally Smarter Woman / Nefesh B’Nefesh has been postponed due to circumstances beyond our control.

What I do know is this: women’s stories about money — power, scarcity, worth, and permission — come up again and again in my work as a psychologist and coach.

If and when this workshop is rescheduled, I’ll share details here. In the meantime, this is a conversation worth having.