🌿 Radical Wholeness, Queer Liberation: The Work of Grassroots Life Coaching, LLC
Answers provided by: Di Nadeau (they/them), Founder of Grassroots Life Coaching, LLCI am excited to introduce you to Di Nadeau, the founder of Grassroots Life Coaching. After receiving the answers from Di, I can tell they care deeply and have learned so much from their own lived experience. I hope you enjoy learning more about Di!
Image of Di Nadeau, provided by Di Nadeau
1. Tell us about your journey—how did your queer-owned business come to life?
Due to my multiple intersecting and marginalized identities, I am no stranger to systemic oppression. Prior to landing in IFS (Internal Family Systems) therapy 12 years ago, I spent most of my life struggling with the complexity of not understanding my own experience of oppression, resulting in a mountain of accumulated internalized messaging. It was my ability to use IFS for myself later in life that allowed me to unpack and unburden this internalized oppression.
As a result of my fluency with the IFS model, my therapist suggested I go through IFS training myself to become a practitioner. I took this suggestion to heart and not only completed the required training for becoming an IFS practitioner, I also worked for IFS Institute as a Practice Assistant (PA) trainer for IFS Level 1 and 2 trainings, was invited to be a PA trainer for other PA’s at the 2023 IFS Institute annual conference, presented a conference session to therapists on IFS, Autism, and Ableism, and have become a fully trained IFIO (Intimacy from the Inside Out) Relationship Practitioner.
I have recently left my longtime nonprofit world role of Equity, People, and Culture department director, national trainer, and DEI consultant to expand my IFS, IFIO, and mediation private practice from part-time to full-time. To be a fully self-employed, queer business owner has been an aspiration for many years, and I am so thankful to all those who have supported and inspired me to succeed.
2. What mission or values guide your work and how does being queer-owned shape that vision?
Grassroots Life Coaching, LLC Mission:
Through the transformative framework of my offerings, my mission is to provide genuine, caring, and culturally responsive personal, relationship, and mediation services that support my clients in their birthright to thrive. By centering those most impacted by marginalization — including Queer, Trans, People of the Global Majority, and Neurodivergent communities, as well as people practicing a wide range of relationship structures — I foster healing, resilience, and authentic connection in service of collective liberation.
Grassroots Life Coaching, LLC Values:
Liberatory healing – I offer decolonized, trauma-centered, and culturally responsive healing services, honoring the wisdom of each individual client.
Wholeness and multiplicity – I welcome, understand, affirm, and honor all inner Parts of my clients’ systems for their story, needs, and functional purpose.
Relational integrity – My services are grounded in consent, honesty, and care, and support individuals, partners, and communities in creating authentic and reciprocal relationships.
Intersectional justice – I stay in active relationship with systems of power, honoring the truth of how oppression shapes lives and life journeys. My work is rooted in equity, humility, accountability, and collective care, and I hold a commitment to ongoing learning and unlearning.
Curiosity and compassion – I bring open-hearted inquiry that allows me to meet clients where they are. I offer warmth, nonjudgment, and deep respect for individual complexity.
Community and interdependence – I see healing as both personal and collective- always in relation, always toward deeper connection, always with liberation at the center.
Being queer-owned has profoundly shaped the vision of Grassroots Life Coaching, LLC.
Grassroots Life Coaching, LLC Vision:
I envision a world where healing is decolonized, relationships are grounded in consent and care, and every individual can access tools to live in wholeness and meaningful connection.
Graphic provided by Di Nadeau
I am deeply aware of what it feels like to be dismissed and marginalized within dominant systems. Through my experience of intersectionality, I have been forced to develop a sensitivity toward injustice, discrimination, and internalized oppression. It is because of my lived experience that I center my services on clients who also experience receiving fragmented messages about who they are allowed to be. I have embedded an inherent refusal to replicate oppressive models of care within the services of Grassroots Life Coaching through honoring complexity, nonlinearity, and possibility. I emphasize wholeness and multiplicity in my work, recognizing that people contain many truths that can't be reduced to one identity or story. I hold a deeply Queer approach to embrace fluidity, nuance, and contradiction as strengths, not flaws. My commitment to community and collective liberation is a direct echo of historical and current Queer survival strategies, where we choose one another, show up for each other, and see healing as necessarily individual and collective. In this way, my lived experience as a Queer, Trans, Nonbinary, Autistic Person of the Global Majority shapes my work and redefines relationships outside of heteronormative templates.
3. What challenges have you faced as a queer entrepreneur, and how have you overcome them?
I believe that Queerness means living outside of the norm. It means being an authentic, naturally diverse expression of humanity. I believe it entails thriving in life as you are. I have personally struggled within the colonistic, heteronormative construct of the academic achievement elitism that impacts sociocultural and sociofinancial standing. I have experienced extreme barriers and discrimination in my effort to access higher education, and still, I have created a path forward through grassroots learning, training, and expertise. I am now recognized in multiple communities as a valuable, liberation-centered resource for those who seek healing services in support of their marginalized identities.
4. How do you foster inclusivity and community through your business?
I speak to the inherent inclusive foundations of IFS, IFIO, and Equity-centered Mediation. The way I wield these healing modalities allows for genuine acceptance and affirmation of individual experiences. For me, my lived experience leads to a clear understanding of how systems of oppression function and cause harm. I do not profess to know the reality of those with different identities and experiences from my own, but I know that my own intimate relationship with oppression allows me to value, trust, and empathize with clients within intersectional diversity. For me, this is the definition of inclusion, and providing true inclusion is the definition of fostering community.
Graphic provided by Di Nadeau
5. What’s one piece of advice you’d give to other queer folks looking to start their own venture?
The first thing I think of with respect to offering guidance to others looking to start their own Queer-owned business is connection and community. I understand that networking is a catchphrase in the typical, dominant culture, hierarchical business world, so I do not choose to use this word, but instead speak to the importance of connecting and creating community. In my view, networking entails elevator speeches, kitschy taglines, or rushed, and often superficial, self-marketing. In my words, to offer true connection and community, it’s important to “be real, be you, be imperfect, be willing to unlearn colonistic models of being in business, so that the collective can have a chance to truly respond and support you.”
6. What does "queer joy" mean to you, and how do you create or celebrate it in your space?
Queer joy, to me, means allowing everything I think, say, and do to be a celebration of who I am as a unique and integral part of the natural world , unfiltered, unapologetic, unpoliced. I find my way to Queer joy by relishing in my intuitive knowing and affirming my own experience as true and valid. This naturally leads to the joy of celebrating others as sovereign, empowered beings.
7. Who are some queer creators, leaders, or businesses that inspire you right now?
I feel so fortunate for the incredibly inspiring and supportive Queer mentors, creators, and leaders in my life. I have been deeply inspired by Dr. Kim TallBear, adrianne maree brown, Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs, and Alice Wong, and I have experienced profound support, healing, and encouragement from Amy Hoag, Shireen Amini, Marta Mirabella, ahlay blakley, and Aster Pitcher.
8. What’s a song that feels like the soundtrack to your business journey?
“I am Free in My Body” by Shireen Amini
Additional information you want the EIQ community to know:
As I continue the unending journey of decolonizing my life, I experience decolonizing and queering as synonymous. The more I decolonize, the more I become an expression of true queerness. Decolonization and queerness are both rooted in community and collective living, free from the constraints of oppression, and this is what lies at the heart of my business offerings. I am living my best life when I am working in harmony with my clients’ individual expression, which makes life as a queer business owner feel like a celebration of individual and collective liberation.
Learn more or book a session with Di at www.diananadeau.com & if you want to find other queer-owned organizations, download our free app on ios or android, available globally!
