How do you hold onto faith when life hurts? What happens when fear, grief, loss, self-doubt, or circumstances you never chose begin to reshape the way you see yourself and your future?
In this episode of the cityCURRENT Show, host Andrew Bartolotta sits down with Janette Owens, founder of Be Inspired For Real, Nicole Hicks, Certified Biblical Life Coach and founder of Faith Over Fear Coaching; and Mary Holmström, a coach specializing in anticipatory grief, identity, and purpose after loss.
Together, they have a deeply personal conversation about navigating the real stuff of life while holding onto faith—and why struggling doesn’t mean you’re failing in your faith.
Janette shares how Be Inspired For Real began in 2017 after she saw friends struggling and becoming discouraged in their Christian walk. What started as a platform for encouragement has since evolved to include faith-based life coaching designed to help people take actionable steps through challenging seasons.
Coach Nicole opens up about her own life-changing health crisis and the season of anxiety, depression, chronic insomnia, and other challenges that followed. She shares how that experience transformed her understanding of faith and now informs her work helping women move from surviving to thriving and from fear to faith by addressing identity, self-worth, boundaries, and the negative thoughts that can keep people stuck.
Coach Mary introduces an important topic many people may be experiencing without having a name for it: anticipatory grief. The conversation explores grieving a loss before it happens, caregiving, estrangement, losing relationships that still technically exist, and the difficult question of, “Who am I now?” after life has fundamentally changed.
Andrew also shares some of his own experiences with grief and family estrangement, opening the door to an honest discussion about the intersection of faith and pain: How do we leave room for grief, fear, anger, and questions while still trusting God—without pretending everything is okay when it isn’t?
Ultimately, the conversation comes back to community, grace, purpose, and the reminder that you don’t have to do life—or faith—alone. Life will bring seasons we didn’t choose, and growth doesn’t require forgetting what happened or pretending it didn’t hurt. Sometimes growth is simply taking the next faithful step.
Learn more about Be Inspired For Real, meet their partner coaches, and explore coaching resources at:
As Janette puts it: trust God, live with purpose, laugh often, and keep it moving.
