Coaching for Military Spouses and Families in Charleston, SC
Gnosis Wellness Collective offers non-clinical coaching for military spouses and families, in Charleston and online anywhere. Our wellbeing programming has been implemented successfully in the veteran community.
Life coaching to help you understand what's happening beneath your patterns and experiment with new ways of responding.
What This Is For
You have moved more times than you can list from memory. Your license did not transfer, so you restarted a career, and then explained the gaps in every interview afterward. You parented alone through a deployment and then renegotiated the whole household when they came home.
​
You have probably become very good at absorbing whatever the next thing is. That is a real skill and sometimes it has a cost, which is that nobody, including you, has checked in a while whether you are building a life or just accommodating one.
​
This is coaching for that. Not for the person in uniform. For you.
Why Coaching?
What areas of your life are most important to you in this very moment?
It sounds simple. It is less so after a decade of organizing your life around someone else's assignment schedule, when the honest answer is that you are not entirely sure anymore. For a lot of the spouses we work with, it has been a long while since anyone asked. That is where the work starts , not with what is wrong, but with what matters, and whether your life is currently arranged around it.
When counseling is the right call. If you are in crisis, if depression or anxiety is the main thing in the way, or if there is something in the marriage that needs clinical work, coaching is not the answer and we will tell you. Gnosis offers counseling with licensed clinicians for clients located in South Carolina, and Military OneSource provides free confidential non-medical counseling to families worldwide.
What We Actually Work On
Different things, depending on the person. Some of what comes up most often:
Stress, overwhelm, and regulation. Practical skills for a nervous system carrying a lot of moving parts.
Deployment and reintegration. The stretch on your own, and the renegotiation when they come home.
Relationships and boundaries. With your spouse, with family at a distance, with a community that turns over every few years.
Work and what comes next. What you want to be doing, and how to move toward it when the circumstances keep changing.
Parenting. Including kids who are doing their own version of all of this.
Grief and change. Moves end things; friendships, jobs, a place that finally felt like home.
The Method
ADAPT is a five-stage framework for creating change, developed by Dr. Maia Gill and refined since 2009. It is a set of named, manualized protocols with their own practice structures; not just general wellness content. Despite being a curriculum, its adaptable, and was built with to meet diverse cultures where they are in a way that feel coherent and natural, and has been utilized sucessfully in Veteran and first responder organizations in South Carolina.
You leave able to name and use the tools rather than only having talked about them.
On the Water, Outdoors, or in a Room
Online
Available anywhere. Coaching is non-clinical, so unlike counseling it isn't limited by state licensure.
In Person in Charleston
Charleston County, including Mount Pleasant, West Ashley, James Island, Johns Island, Daniel Island, and North Charleston.
Walk-and-talk
Outdoors in low-traffic locations. Being outside helps people feel grounded, and walking gives you somewhere to put the energy.
Surf & paddleboard
beginning spring 2027. Ninety minutes, structured so the coaching happens before, during, and after time in the water.
Does the VA or TRICARE Cover This?
Coaching is not health care, so it is not billable to the VA, TRICARE, or any insurer, and it is not part of VA Community Care.
People often ask about HSA and FSA funds.
On its own, coaching is generally not a qualified medical expense, because those accounts are meant for treating a specific diagnosed condition rather than general wellbeing. Some clients have used HSA or FSA funds with a letter of medical necessity from their own physician. Whether that is accepted is between you, your doctor, and your plan administrator, and it is worth checking before you assume. Spending those funds on something that does not qualify makes the withdrawal taxable and adds a penalty. We can provide an itemized receipt either way.
​
Our counseling services are licensed mental health treatment and are usually HSA and FSA eligible without any of that.
If cost is the barrier, three things are true. We have a sliding scale. Group surf sessions are $75 a person. And Warrior Surf Foundation runs free programming for veterans in Charleston, if that is the better fit for where you are, we would rather tell you than not.
Who You'd Be Working With
Hillary Boyd
M.A. CMHC, Coach
Hillary Boyd, M.A. in Clinical Counseling and Advanced ADAPT Coach, shares her expertise in applied child development, women's well-being, and integration of diverse healing practices into daily life, with a multicultural population. Hillary accomplishes this by teaching her clients how to become unstuck from barriers in daily living to connect with what one cherishes the most in life. Hillary Boyd, M.A., brings over a decade of experience with specialization in how to set healthy boundaries, defy societal/self expectations to soar, and revive your purpose with science-based skills to move along one's path.
Bill Jarboe
ISA LVL 3, Surf Therapy Certified, Coach
Bill is a combat veteran, husband, father, and the kind of person who found healing in the ocean before he even knew he was looking for it. After years of navigating PTSD, addiction, and the disorienting quiet that follows military service, Bill discovered that the water could reach places nothing else could. What started as a birthday surf lesson became a calling - and eventually a life's work. Bill is a Groundswell-trained surf therapy facilitator who believes healing isn't about fixing what's broken. It's about reconnecting to what was always there. He brings lived experience, radical honesty, and a deep understanding of what it means to carry invisible wounds while still showing up every day.
Amanda Fay Quinn
RYT-500, Yoga Instructor
Amanda Quinn is a 500-hour Registered Yoga Teacher (RYT-500) with a focus on yoga philosophy, psychology, and the transformative practice of Yoga Nidra. She is devoted to helping students move beyond the physical practice of yoga, cultivating self-awareness, nervous system regulation, and inner balance through the timeless wisdom of yoga. Drawing on the profound healing power of Yoga Nidra, Amanda guides students through the layers of body, breath, and mind to invite deep rest, restoration, resilience, and inner peace. Rooted in both yogic philosophy and an understanding of the mind-body connection, her classes weave together mindful movement, breathwork, meditation, visualization, and embodied awareness to support healing while encouraging students to integrate the principles of yoga into everyday life. With a gentle and compassionate approach, Amanda creates a nurturing, welcoming space where students can release chronic tension, reduce stress, quiet the mind, and reconnect with themselves.
Jordan Dasher, Coach
Jordan Dasher is a former Army combat veteran and a graduate of the Warrior Surf Foundation program. In the eight years since, he has volunteered there and taught surf sessions, first as someone going through the program and then as the person in the water with whoever came next. He is lifeguard and CPR certified. He is trained in ADAPT and coaches adults working through transition, burnout, and questions about direction and purpose. Jordan is also an artist, musician, and muralist who uses creative expression to talk about lived experience in a way that reaches veterans and civilians alike, and he has spent years teaching and mentoring in his community. He is a husband and a father of four.
Common Questions
01.
Do I have to talk about what happened?
No. Coaching is not trauma processing, and it does not require you to give an account of anything. We work with what is happening now.​
02.
Is this therapy?
No. Coaching is non-clinical and involves no diagnosis. Gnosis offers counseling separately, with licensed clinicians.​
​
​
​
03.
I am not the one who is struggling. My spouse is.
You are still allowed to have support. Being the person who holds everything together is not the same as being fine, and it is not a reason to wait until you are not.
04.
Do you work with teenagers?
Yes, from age 15. Military teens carry a version of this that gets very little attention, a new school partway through the year, a parent deployed, and having done both of those six or seven times before graduation.
Coaching with a teen is arranged with a parent or guardian, and we are clear from the start about what stays between the coach and your teen and what does not.
05.
Do you work with the service members too?
Yes. We coach veterans, active duty, and first responders, and some families have one person working with each of us. Whether that is a good idea depends on the family, and it is worth talking through first.
06.
Is this really for first responders, or mostly for veterans?
Veterans tend to get the most attention when it comes to accessing help, and first responders often end up as the afterthought on someone else's page. First responders need the same support and the same access to resources.
The first responder version of this work was built off a formal needs assessment of that population, not adapted from the veteran one.
07.
How long does this take?
Most people work with us for eight to twelve weeks. Some continue on a monthly basis afterward, and some do a stretch of work, stop, and come back later when something changes. If a set of orders lands partway through, we can keep going.