Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Michelle Barone. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Michelle, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. So, naming is such a challenge. How did you come up with the name of your brand?

The name, “Moksha Grace”, came to me in two separate gifts from the Universe.

The first gift was during my daily meditation. Each day I’ll pick a different meditation based on my mood, energy, or what I am working on. The meditation I chose was a teacher I deeply resonate with. He always includes a mantra and reviews its meaning before we get started. On this particular day, it was a word I had never heard of before, “moksha.” By the time the meditation was complete, I knew that “moksha” was the key to something amazing. I could feel it in my bones. As the teacher described, “moksha” means freedom and liberation. When I looked it up in the Sanskrit dictionary, the words to define Moksha also included: solution, emancipation, settling a question, liberator, deliverance, redemption, detach, shake off, and absolution. This encompassed everything I had been through and everything I wanted to help others do for themselves.

The second gift arrived during a meditative journey with my coach. In the activation process, “Moksha Grace” came alive and rose from the ashes of my past, like the Phoenix. As we continued the coaching process, she helped me visualize and actualize the kind of coach I wanted to be – how I wanted to show up for clients and what I really wanted to create. It had always been there, hidden deep within. It was just waiting for me to unlock and activate that part of me. It’s my calling and who I am at my core, Moksha Grace.

Michelle, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Hi everyone! My name is Michelle Barone and I am a Professional Advocate and Coach. I’m also part of an amazing family and I love my roles as wife, mom, and daughter.

I am not a therapist and reliving the past with clients is not my job. I walk with them as they observe where they are, I help them identify where they want to be, and I teach them how to bridge the gap. 

Everyone is perfect and everyone has everything they need inside of themselves. They just can’t see through the chaos their emotions have created due to years of outdated beliefs, patterns, verbal/physical abuse, trauma, and dysfunction.

Most coaching available is geared toward a specific topic or area of life (career, finances, love, etc.) and typically coaches will choose to do lightwork (think Law of Attraction) or shadow work (pulling traumas to the surface for processing).

Moksha Grace Coaching is my unique brand of coaching that blends different philosophies and coaching styles into a customized, three-month roadmap for each client. Within the first week of using the strategies and tools I provide, my clients experience massive shifts in every area of their lives.

It’s so important to me to provide my clients with coaching suited to their specific needs and desires. Unfortunately, my first experience with coaching was back when I worked in corporate healthcare. I had just been reassigned to work under a bully boss who felt coaching would mold me into the corporate machine they wanted me to be. However, much to their displeasure, I was not interested in compromising my values or integrity by ignoring bullying, toxicity, and poor management. I chose to remove myself from that position.

Fast forward a few years to when I was working for a coaching company as an enrollment coach. While I was provided coaching with six brilliant coaches, I started to sense that same molding to fit the company’s desires. The focus shifted to what the company wanted for me, not what was best for me.

That was when I decided to find my own coach. Through this coach, I identified my true desires and passions and experienced unbiased coaching for the first time. It became so clear to me that I am here to guide people to their emotional freedom. Freedom from regret, guilt, being misunderstood, and feeling less-than.

Now, as a certified Life Coach, I work with adults who are struggling and suffering with bad jobs, toxic relationships, life patterns, and never-ending negativity. There is nothing my clients can present to me that I can’t help them navigate through. I’ve been the stressed housewife and mom, the corporate executive, the healthcare advocate, and the product of a dysfunctional upbringing. I understand these challenges and I’ve worked through them myself. I’m here to save my clients the time, energy, and confusion of figuring it out on their own.

I am helping my client be the best and highest version of themselves by seeing who they really are and supporting that version to step into their reality. Everyone is perfect – they have everything they need. They just need the space and support to be gracefully free and liberated.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

I’ve experienced many things in my life that would illustrate my resilience but there’s one that stands above the rest. 24 years ago my world flipped upside down. My daughter, who was three at the time, wouldn’t stop crying in pain. Then the fevers started. We spent three months bouncing between doctors, rounding up one misdiagnosis after the next. Finally, we made it to a doctor who took our concerns seriously, and on November 3, 1998, we got an answer. Darkness fell over me that day.

My beautiful girl was diagnosed with Stage 4 Neuroblastoma, an aggressive form of childhood cancer. Her chance of survival was 3% and the tumor on her adrenal gland was the size of a softball. It felt like a burlap sack had been put over my head. My husband took me aside and reminded me of our family motto – Never Give Up. Those three simple words were like a shock to bring me back to reality.

I didn’t know how much time I’d have left with my daughter, but I knew our best chance of success was being the mom I’d always dreamed of. Moms make everything better and FUN. Over the course of three years, I stuck by my daughter’s side through experimental treatments, three different hospitals, and countless procedures. No matter what we were doing – tests, chemo, radiation, stem cell rescue – we were having fun. I made sure of it! I was with her every step of the way. I threw every other commitment out the window and focused on just me and her.

Now my daughter is 27 years old, healthy as can be, and runs a company of her own, providing operations consulting to businesses.

Through that experience, we both found our path through chaos. I was broken down and rose to the occasion. After all, we are never given more than we can handle. Now it’s my honor to help others do the same for themselves, no matter where their journey is taking them.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

The lesson I had to unlearn was that leaders are in their position because they are good leaders and they can be trusted to lead us to what will be in our best interest.

I’m not saying good leaders don’t exist – I’ve had the great pleasure of working with some wonderful leaders who helped me build trust and taught me what good leadership looks like.

However, I’ve learned the hard way that just because someone is given a leadership title does not mean they know what they’re doing or are in it for the right reasons.

Some leaders are only interested in the title, the climb, and the power. Some leaders are so afraid of losing their reputation that they would rather stay silent than speak powerfully and, in some cases, do the right thing by going against toxicity. As much as it saddens me to say, some leaders start their career to serve and end up being greedy for money, clout, and authority. They end up putting themselves on a pedestal so high that they lose sight of their why.

A good leader is strong and firm but interested in the good of all. A good leader wants to teach and work with those they lead. A good leader is not afraid to have hard conversations. A good leader is focused on building up their team and supporting them. A good leader is not interested in toxic positivity or “saving face”. A good leader operates from authenticity and love. Most of all, a good leader doesn’t have to ask to be followed, they would be followed gracefully.

A good leader has done the internal work so they can lead without emotional chaos. A great leader has great coaches/mentors to guide them on their journey.

Contact Info:

• Website: MokshaGrace.com
• Instagram: MokshaGrace.com/Instagram
• Facebook: MokshaGrace.com/Facebook
• Linkedin: MokshaGrace.com/LinkedIn
• Youtube: MokshaGrace.com/YouTube