About

THE COUPLES COACH

We believe that we can help you RADICALLY TRANSFORM your relationship by applying the tools that we have to share with you.

Our story

I met my first husband (Mike) when I was 19, I fell pregnant at 21 and we got married after I had my first son, Darren. Mike was 17 years older than me.  We were together for 10 years. We had a second son 2 years after Darren. Cameron was 7 weeks premature and almost didn’t make it.  So there I was a young mom of 24 with 2 young children and a challenging marriage.  It was really tough.  I used to say that I had a drinking problem – Mike drank and I had a problem! Mike was a typical ‘Old School’ Male (Chauvinistic and Patriarchal) and became emotionally abusive when he had had too much to drink. 

I tried to do the right ‘Christian’ thing by staying with him and trying to follow all the ‘Christian’ marriage advice out there at the time.  Mike’s greatest problem with me is that I wouldn’t listen to him?!  I had no idea what he meant. He absolutely loved his sons, which is why I stayed married to him. I fell pregnant again in 2000, but had a miscarriage at 17 weeks.   Mike died very suddenly in February 2001.  He had an aortic aneurysm and was dead within minutes.  His business was in financial ruin and he hadn’t left a will.  Luckily, we had an anti-nuptial contract with accrual, so I was not financially responsible for the ‘mess’ that he left behind.

I was not yet 30 with two small boys aged 5 and 7 and had to start a new life.  I met Andre in July 2001 and we got married in the December of the same year.  We celebrated our 12th Wedding Anniversary on 8 Dec 2013.

Andre was a widower, with two sons in their late teens /early twenties.  His first wife had breast cancer and passed away in 1998. They had been happily married for almost 25 years. I knew who Andre and Jenny were (even though I had never met or spoken to Andre) because we were all at the same Church.

Andre and Jenny headed up the Marriage Ministry Team at the Church and ran all the Marriage Courses, from Marriage Prep to Marriage Enrichment programs.  One of the programs was called The Treasure Hunt – Come and find the treasure in your marriage.  I begged Mike while we were married to do the Treasure Hunt course with me but he refused point blank.  His thoughts regarding this went something along the lines of if he wasn’t having an affair, we didn’t have a problem.  So we never got to do any Marriage Courses (I suppose on the bright side of this is that he wasn’t having an affair?!)

I was very involved with Women’s Ministry at the Church for many years.  I have a passion for working with women and spent many hours doing various leadership programs and counseling courses. 

Andre and I ran a couple of courses (One of them being The Marriage Course) for the first year or two of our marriage. We were actually going to go into full time Church Ministry when our lives took a turn in a very different direction.  We both found that the more questions we had regarding ‘Christian issues’ the less answers we could find. To cut a long story short we found ourselves questioning the very foundations of our beliefs and faith and landed up ‘outside’ the Church. 

For the last 5 or so years we have been following a far broader path (one that is far more tolerant and less judgmental) I found that once I connected with my Feminine core and discovered the Goddess within me, a whole new world opened up to me.  It has been incredible sharing this journey with Andre and a huge amount of healing and restoration has come into both our lives through embracing both the masculine and feminine aspects of the Divine.

I am a breast cancer survivor. In August 2012 I found a lump on my right breast and ended up having to have a mastectomy because it was malignant.   I have finished chemo and radiation and am starting to feel ‘normal’ again now that my hair has grown back

Andre and I have really sat down and re-evaluated what we want to do for the rest of our lives and both of us believe that we have a huge amount of life experience that could be put to good use by offering Couples Coaching. 

We believe that there are people who want to work on their relationships, but don’t necessarily need therapy or counseling and/or don’t fit into or feel comfortable with the more traditional courses on offer.

Yours in Love

Laurene & Andre