Today we’d like to introduce you to Kendra Merrill.
Kendra, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I grew up in the South, where girls were taught to be sweet, agreeable, and quiet — don’t talk back, don’t question authority, just follow the lead of someone who knows better. I absorbed that so completely that by adulthood, I didn’t know how to ask myself what I wanted. I followed other people’s blueprints and called it living. On the outside, everything looked fine. Inside, I was exhausted in a way I couldn’t explain.
Then, at 34, my daughter Adline was stillborn. Six weeks later, my father died suddenly of a heart attack. I don’t have words for what that does to a person — sobs that come from so deep in your body they seem to touch your soul, while the world keeps spinning and yours has completely stopped.
Grief shattered me, as it does so many of us. But it also gave me permission to stop, and in the stillness I found my truth. For the first time, the world wasn’t asking me to perform. I could say no. I could pull back. No one questioned it — losing a child was an “acceptable” reason to exit life. In that space, I started hearing my own voice for the first time.
Now I help women who’ve experienced loss of any kind find their way closer to their own truth, because grief doesn’t lie — it reveals what matters and what never did. I’m a Somatic Life coach, which means I work with the whole human — mind, body, spirit, emotions — because that’s where grief lives, and where real change begins.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
No, it hasn’t been smooth.
By the time I was an adult, I’d become what I used to proudly call “an externally motivated person.” I waited for someone else — a boss, a mentor, a stranger — to point me in a direction, then I’d execute. I got my master’s degree because a former boss said it would “open doors,” not because I was dreaming about grad school. When I mentioned to my trainer how exhausting my commute was, she casually asked if I’d thought about selling my house. Two weeks later, there was a FOR SALE sign in my yard. None of those choices were wrong, exactly, but I never stopped to ask if I actually wanted any of it.
After I lost my daughter and my dad, my husband and I went to Lake Tahoe. Sitting on a rock looking out at the water, I felt this collision between who the world expected me to be and who I actually was inside — the version of me that had it all together, the high performer who believed good behavior earned good things. She was gone, and I didn’t know who was left.
The years that followed compounded the grief — job loss, multiple family members’ cancer diagnoses, a miscarriage, and one last negative pregnancy test in our fertility journey. For someone who’d grown up believing her worth was tied to becoming a mother, that moment nearly destroyed me. And I knew it was time to listen to a pull I’d felt since Adeline’s passing: to go to Bali. It made no logical sense because I’d just started a new job, barely traveled overseas, and a volcano had erupted six weeks earlier. Every rational part of me said don’t go. But something deeper knew. So I booked the trip, and two weeks later I was at the airport.
When I came back, everything shifted. Within four weeks, after three years of searching, my husband and I found a home. Two weeks after we moved in, I found out I was pregnant — naturally — with my son. I don’t think Bali was magic, exactly, though it was certainly a conduit. I believe it was because I’d finally trusted myself.
As life continued to hand us more loss, I lived in survival mode, white-knuckling through it while quietly laying the foundation for what was to come. I did what I could: therapy, yoga, journaling, solo trips to rest, breathing deeply before meetings that drained me — not to fix anything, just to acknowledge, “I know this is hard, and it’s okay to feel that.”
Every small moment of choosing myself opened a doorway.
Like when my work team planned a volunteer project at a veterans cemetery, and my body reacted before my mind did — tense, racing heart, tears. I told my boss it would be hard for me; she didn’t give me the out I was looking for and asked if I could “reframe it.” So I planned to push through anyway, the way I always had. Then my father-in-law asked a simple question: “Why don’t you just call the cemetery yourself?” It reminded me I had the power to choose. So I emailed the cemetery and asked to volunteer differently — no permission needed, and they were completely accommodating. On the day, once I stepped away from my team toward my own assignment, I sobbed — big, deep sobs of relief. It was one of the first times I consciously chose what mattered to me over what the world expected.
That choice came from what I found in my grief: my truth, my voice, my knowing. And that’s the road that brought me here — not smooth, but honest.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Truth After loss?
Truth After Loss is a space for women who’ve experienced loss and feel pulled to make changes in their lives, because grief reveals what matters and what never did. She’s beginning to see the stories she inherited, the expectations she never chose, and feeling an inner nudge towards a life more aligned.
Most life coaches work from the neck up. Mindset, goals, strategy, accountability. They don’t account for the weight she’s still carrying and how grief lives in the body. As a Somatic Life Coach, our work together honors her grief without shame. It doesn’t ask her to return to who she was or become who she could be; this work meets her exactly where she is. No striving toward someone she isn’t. No implied inadequacy. The work starts in the present moment and goes deeper than most are willing to go.
Through group or 1:1 coaching programs, she’ll learn to recognize when her choices and decisions come from the world’s expectations and when they come from her own truth – so she can build a life from her truth instead.
How can people work with you, collaborate with you or support you?
You can experience my work through different types of events held around Austin and virtually. If you’re ready to go deeper, find your center, and feel alive again, we can work together through my Centered and Alive Coaching Programs (group and 1:1). I love to explore collaboration opportunities. I’m open to being a podcast guest, hosting events, or facilitating retreats with aligned partners.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://truthafterloss.com
- Instagram: truthafterloss
- Facebook: truthafterloss
- LinkedIn: Kendra Merrill
- Youtube: truthafterloss
