Serving Beyond: Felicia Williams, R.N. and Health Coach, Supports Clients With Natural/Holistic Healing

Felicia Williams, a graduate of Winston-Salem University (class of 2007) and Registered Nurse of 16 years, serves patients nationally as a motivational interviewing trained Health Coach for one of the largest health insurance companies in the nation. Felicia was attracted to the healthcare field as a young girl as she often times helped her mother care for her younger sister who has Joubert’s Syndrome and Cerebral Palsy. As a child, she also witnessed her grandmother suffer from a stroke, which she now understands was partly due to diet and lifestyle.

Currently as a nurse, Felicia’s passion is to help meet others needs and nurture them back to health. She feels inclined to help others learn more about their health and take power over their disease so that it would not result in poor quality of life. Working as a nurse allows her to fully engage her patients and build rapport, which helps set the stage and empower them to be well informed about their health and be their own best advocate. The only drawback she has found in the nursing role is the limitation of not being able to diagnose or prescribe. As a result, Felicia decided to advance her education and obtain a Master of Science in Nursing with a specialization in Family Nurse Practitioner, which she is pursuing at this time.

Although Felicia is making an impact on her 9-5 nursing job as a health coach providing a safe space for patients to explore their health concerns, develop realistic goals to overcome barriers, and take steps towards better health, she feels she is not quite making the impact she would like due to limitations by corporate regulations to teach about complementary ways to heal. Therefore, she has chosen to serve beyond her 9-5 job by offering free health education in her community, including sessions on how to effectively manage blood pressure, cholesterol, and diabetes. While embarking upon a personal voyage for complementary treatment to reduce her own symptoms caused by lupus, psoriatic arthritis, fibromyalgia, high blood pressure, and depression, she journeyed into natural and holistic treatment options. She stated, “the medications just kept adding on, but I didn’t feel any better. At that point, I started to look into alternative and complementary ways to better manage my health and feel better.”

Felicia founded Phoenix Health & Wellness, LLC in 2018, which is based in Greensboro, NC. As a Practitioner she provides a myriad of ways to support her clients with natural and holistic healing of the mind, body, and spirit. One of the ways Felicia supports her clients on their healing journey is by offering Reiki, which is a noninvasive energy therapy acknowledged as a compliment to traditional treatment options used to de-stress the mind, body, and spirit by re-balancing energy in the body. In her practice, Felicia facilitates Reiki sessions with sound, aromatherapy, herbs, gemstones, and very light touch. Each session is coupled with health and wellness coaching to strategize with clients and develop ways to improve stress, diet, sleep, physical activity, and monitoring of symptoms, as well as motivate and empower. She offers face to face, telephonic, and online coaching. She helps her clients take charge of their health. Felicia highlights that her services do not take the place of her client’s doctor advisement but is a complement to her client’s treatment regimen from the care team. Felicia’s mission is to help reduce health disparities in our communities and her goal is to do so one client at a time. She states, “when people feel better, they are also able to interact more harmoniously with family and friends and become more productive at work and in life.”

When asked where she sees herself in the next five years as a Nurse Practitioner, an alternative health advocate and nurse entrepreneur, she revealed that in the next five years she sees herself working to make a greater impact to dispel health disparities in our communities. She envisions herself within the next year opening an integrative health and wellness clinic to offer traditional and complementary treatment options along with other Nurse Practitioners and a multidisciplinary team (i.e. dieticians, massage therapists, acupuncturists, etc.). In 2019, services will also include various health and wellness workshops and boot camps, foot detox, vaginal/yoni steams, and health and wellness retreats. Felicia fully supports her client’s autonomy to choose what works best for them and plans to bring on additional health and wellness coaches to join Phoenix Health & Wellness in providing education and support to those seeking a complementary avenue of health improvement.

To find out more about Felicia and her services, contact her at phoenixhealwell@myself.com