About Nina Della Vecchia | Spiritual Life Coach & Reiki Master

In her own words

Resilience is not about carrying more.

I have always been someone who finds a way through. For a long time, I thought resilience meant bouncing back, turning challenges into opportunities and continuing to move forward. Life has taught me that resilience can also mean knowing when to pause, when to receive support and when it is time to put something down.

I think of this as alchemy. It is not about pretending the hard, heavy or painful parts did not happen, or calling the wound itself the gold. It is about becoming curious about what the experience may hold and discovering the wisdom, clarity, strength or possibility that can emerge from what you have lived through.

Nina sitting comfortably on a velvet settee, relaxed and at ease

Seventh of nine. Resilience, reimagined. The toolbox stays open.

I grew up as the seventh of nine children in an Italian immigrant family that faced its share of hardship. Through therapy, coaching, spiritual teachings, nature and a great deal of deep inner work, I developed what I can only describe as an ever-expanding toolbox.

It stays open. I draw from it to create greater harmony in my own life, and I share what may support the people I work with.

That, I think, is part of what makes this work different. I do not pretend to have all the answers for you. I bring years of lived experience, tools and intuitive insight to help you reconnect with your own wisdom, discover what supports you and recognize the gold in what you have lived through.

I take this work seriously without requiring us to take ourselves seriously every minute of it.

The years that shaped me

Caregiving, grief and the instinct for finding light.

From a young age, and I share this with real gratitude, I had an instinct for seeing the light even in the darkest moments. Life handed me my share of dark ones. Some I was born into. Some I stumbled into. Some I walked into without knowing yet what I was walking into.

The years I spent caring for family were the hardest and most life altering of all. Long, serious illness took my dad, my mom and my niece. My dad had multiple strokes, and the last left him bedridden, non verbal and on a feeding tube, with my mom as his full time caregiver for three years until his death. Seven months later, my mom was diagnosed with stage four colon cancer and fought it for six years. Like so many caregivers, she had set her own health aside to tend to him.

My niece was diagnosed at thirteen with bone cancer, shortly after my mom. I was intimately involved in her life and her care through her five year battle. I was honored to be the aunt of that bright, funny, one of a kind light of a person, and I miss her every day.

Those years are the reason I do this work, and the reason I hold such a deep place in my heart for family caregivers. I know the exhaustion. I know the grief for what was, and the grief for what will never be. I know the feelings you are not supposed to say out loud.

I will not tell you it isn't dark.

I will not tell you what you should be seeing.

Sometimes I am holding the flashlight

until you can see again.

Nothing you bring will surprise me.

The turning point

When everything stopped, I heard: “Go inward.”

In 2022, a severe vertigo relapse changed the course of my life. I was diagnosed with three vestibular conditions and spent months unable to drive, read or use screens. I entered vestibular rehabilitation while waiting to see a specialist at Johns Hopkins, and ultimately had to leave my job and the life I had known.

Five days into the relapse, I experienced my first panic attack and genuinely believed I was going to die. After the paramedics confirmed what had happened and left, I sat alone, crying and calling out everything I could no longer do.

I can't work. I can't drive.

I can't read. I can't use screens.

What am I supposed to do?

A journal with a luna moth and the phases of the moon painted on the cover, standing on a wooden shelf

Then, as clearly as if someone were standing beside me, I heard two words:

Go inward.

The message jolted me out of that painful moment. I did not yet understand that I was at the beginning of a spiritual awakening. I began following what appeared next: automatic writing, spiritual teachings, a school of mystics and intuitive experiences I had never known how to name.

Looking back, I can see that I was being shown a way through and a path forward.

I still navigate this condition through ongoing rehabilitation, an at-home care plan and medication. My story does not end with everything returning to the way it was. It continues with discovering who I am becoming and creating a life that honors who I am now.

You can change, even if nothing around you does.

The work found me again

The calling was already there.

I became a certified life coach in 2014 while working in sales. For four years, I supported coaching clients alongside my full-time career, and the skills shaped how I served people in every role I held.

But building a coaching practice while working full time became too much. I chose the “safety and security” of the career I knew and stepped away from coaching professionally.

Then, while discerning what was next for me in 2023, people began reaching out. Some were people I had not spoken to in years, navigating hardships that moved them to call me for support. I received those calls as a sign that it was time to return to coaching. This time, I knew spiritual life coaching needed to be part of the path.

Nina offering Reiki with her hands above a client resting on the treatment table, her certifications framed on the wall behind her

Coach since 2014. Called back in 2023. Not separate paths.

Reiki was already supporting my own healing when my Reiki Master suggested that I become Reiki 1 certified. He told me it would help me hold more space for my coaching clients and that I might eventually want to offer Reiki as a service.

Holding more space resonated immediately. Offering Reiki did not.

“That's not me,” I thought.

“I'm the one who goes to people for Reiki.”

About an hour into my Reiki 1 certification, something changed. The energy moving through me and the connection I felt while practicing with my classmates were undeniable. I wanted to practice every chance I had throughout the weekend.

What began as a way to hold greater space for my coaching clients became a calling of its own. Reiki, coaching, intuition and spiritual connection were not separate paths. Together, they were becoming the work I was here to do.

Nina standing in the woods at dusk, holding a small bowl in both hands

Five rungs. One climb. No skipping to the top.

Why Dare to Be Me

The name is a ladder, and every rung matters.

Somewhere in all of it, I honed my resilience into something I could name and teach. At the center of it sits one idea, and it is the reason this practice is called what it is called.

Dare to be yourselfNot the version that is easiest for everyone else.
Dare to hear yourselfOver all of the noise, including your own.
Dare to trust yourselfYou usually know. You have just stopped believing that you know.
Dare to choose yourselfOut loud, and on purpose.
Dare to put yourself firstThe rung almost everybody flinches at.

Not selfishly. Sacredly.

Every rung is one I have had to climb myself. Dare to Be Me is more than the name of my business. It is the invitation at the heart of my work.

What guides me

The values I work by

These values guide how I hold space and how we work together.

A safe, non judgmental space

Anything can be felt and said here, held with confidentiality and care. Resentment, anger, guilt, spiritual questions. All of it is welcome.

Honesty and transparency

Openness and integrity in everything. I am nurturing, and I will not coddle you. Those two things can live together.

Results shaped around you

Unconventional and open to any healthy path that helps you reach the outcome you actually want. There is no formula here, because you are not a formula.

Embracing the unique

Honoring what makes you different, because that is exactly where your power tends to live.

Mutual respect

A partnership of equals. You are the authority on your own life. I am a guide and a mirror, not someone here to fix you.

Harmony

Creating space for greater ease and alignment in body, mind and spirit. Not someday when life finally calms down, but now, in the middle of it.

Training and certifications

Credentials, for the part of you that wants to know.

Intuition is foundational to my work. So is being well trained in the practices I offer. Both belong here, and I have never seen them as being in conflict.

Certified Life, Life Purpose and Career Coach, Life Purpose Institute
Certified Spiritual Life Coach, Life Purpose Institute
Reiki I, Reiki II and Reiki Master
Archangelic Light Master
Certified coach since 2014
Founder, Dare to Be Me Coaching & Reiki, 2024

Thirty years in the practical, results-oriented world. A spiritual awakening in my fifties. I did not have to choose between them, and neither do you.

Nina writing in a notebook at her desk beside her laptop and a small plant

Nina seated on a sofa, smiling, holding a small stuffed unicorn

Sacred and deep. Never solemn. Occasionally profane.

A few true things about me

The human behind the work.

Water is my favorite drink. I love the feel of it, the healing in it and being near it. And here is the funny part: I cannot swim. A medium once suggested that this is possibly because I drowned in another lifetime. I feel that in my bones. Maybe this is the year I finally take lessons again.

I have thirteen nieces and nephews and fourteen great-nieces and great-nephews. I became an aunt at one year and ten months old. Six of us were raised more like siblings than aunts to nieces and nephews, and to this day we sing, laugh, dance and generally embarrass the next generation, who secretly think we are still cool. I never had children of my own, and I am a family person to my core, dysfunction and all. I have learned to love the whole of it.

Deep inner work and spiritual exploration have been part of my own healing, and I hold enormous gratitude for the teachers and companions who have shared that path with me.

Outside of work, you will find me hiking and basking in nature, staring at my bike and wondering if this is the year I ride her again, looking for a labyrinth to walk and hugging trees, unironically.

Why I do this

The moment someone realizes they have choices again.

Clarity and inner strength where there was once only struggle. Witnessing those emerge within someone is the most life-giving work I know. I am in awe every single time.

I do this so people can experience real inner shifts: joy, clarity and the courage to live differently, even when the circumstances around them stay exactly the same. This is lasting change, from the inside out.

You're usually the one who knows what to do.What happens when you don't?

“I tell you things I can't tell anyone. You make me feel like it's not crazy.”
In a client's words

If this resonates, I would love to meet you.

Start with a complimentary discovery call for coaching, or book a Reiki session and feel what this work is like. Come exactly as you are.

Book a Session

Prefer to reach out directly? nina@daretobemecoaching.com · 917-817-0099

Daring to put yourself back into your own life.