About Vanessa Jenkins
My name is Vanesa Jenkins
And I understand what it's like to feel overwhelmed, stretched in too many directions, and completely out of control.
My work comes from lived experience. I know burnout from the inside - how it creeps in, how it takes hold, and how deeply it can affect every part of life.
For me, it didn't happen overnight. Life had its challenges - from single parenting to financial struggles, living below the poverty line, and other hardships along the way. Each experience taught me resilience, though for years I carried it the wrong way, pretending I was okay when I wasn't.
Many of us wake up resenting the day before our feet even touch the floor, or say yes when everything inside us is silently screaming no. I know that space well - doing, giving, pushing through… until we can't anymore.
Eventually, I realised I had been in severe burnout for years.
It was this realisation that led me away from my 20+ year career in education and into the work I do today. I chose to stop pretending, listen to my body, and truly do something to heal.
Slowly, I learned my triggers, rediscovered joy, and started to heal in a way that lasted. Along the way, the years of stress and unmanaged burnout took a toll on my body, and I developed Fibromyalgia. But with the right medication, and the tools and strategies I now teach, I've learned to manage my triggers and my pain - and I'm proud to say I can now go weeks at a time symptom-free.
Here's what I know now that I wish I'd known then: burnout symptoms never fully disappear. Your body remembers, the way it does with any trauma, and it can be triggered again.
That's exactly why having the tools, the strategies, and the self-understanding to bring yourself back to balance isn't optional - it's essential.
Today, I understand my own balance points. I know how to self-regulate when I need to, and I structure my life so I'm no longer putting myself in the positions that used to tip me over the edge. That's the work - not never feeling stretched again, but knowing exactly how to come back to yourself when you are.
Burnout is avoidable, and recovery - real, lasting recovery - is possible.
If I can help even one person avoid what I went through, or find their way back to balance faster than I did, everything I endured will have been worth it.
My Experience
I don't have a coaching certificate on my wall.
What I have is over 25 years of people coming to me - in overwhelm, in crisis, in burnout - long before I had a name for what I did or a business behind it. This work was never something I studied from the outside. I've lived it, taught it, and built it, one relationship at a time.
20+ years in education
Over two decades as a teacher gave me the practical skills this work actually requires: how to hold a room, how to facilitate real change in a group, how to break down complex, overwhelming ideas into steps someone can actually take when they're running on empty. Coaching didn't replace my teaching career - it's been the natural next chapter of it.
A lifetime of being the person people turn to
For as long as I can remember, people have brought me their hardest moments - friends, colleagues, students, strangers who just needed someone steady. That instinct is the foundation everything else is built on.
Supporting clients with practical tools
The framework at the heart of my programmes aren't new - I've used them to guide people toward balance for over 20 years - long before they were ever formalised into the structured workbooks, programmes, and workshops that I offer today.
Advocacy at a systemic level — Eczema Association of New Zealand
Alongside my coaching work, I've spent over 4 years as a patient advocate with the EANZ, supporting patients navigating the chronic illness of eczema, alongside working on a multi-year campaign for funded access to essential medications. This work has meant representing others' interests in formal, high-stakes settings - engaging with pharmaceutical companies, health bodies, committees, and the New Zealand Government. It has taught me how to hold structure and strategy alongside compassion.
The lived experience that underpins it all
None of the above would mean much without the years I spent in burnout myself - pretending I was okay when I wasn't, until I finally learned to listen to my body and heal. That experience isn't a footnote to my work. It's the reason the work exists.