Alana Sharps, HCDC: Surviving, Thriving, and Coaching
Every month, we’re taking an inside look at the lives of two high-conflict divorce coaches (HCDCs). Whether you’re a prospective coach or client, we hope you’ll find inspiration and hope in each graduate’s story and personal reflections.
This week, meet Alana Sharps: a graduate of the High Conflict Divorce Coach Certification Program (HCDCCP), and the fourth featured coach in our HCDC blog series.
Alana Sharps is a multitalented author, speaker, and thought leader – and after graduating from the HCDCCP, she’s also a certified HCDC and child custody consultant. Like many graduates of the program, Alana’s past experiences propelled her into the field of divorce coaching, where she offers both personal wisdom and professional tools from the HCDCCP.
Transforming Life’s Challenges into Her Life’s Work
The last five years of Alana’s life have been filled with learning, shifting, and reassembling the pieces of her former life. After ending an emotionally abusive marriage, Alana threw herself “into learning and doing everything,” she reflected. Her friends and family cheered her toward success and provided support during some of the most difficult moments of her life.
Both personally and professionally, this was a fruitful phase – especially after feeling “held back” by her ex-partner for 16 long years. Yet at the same time, Alana had to relearn the importance of pacing, pausing, and taking a breath. This is something she continues to work on with clients, many of whom share stories that resemble her own.
“I love seeing the relief on a client’s face when they hear me say, ‘I understand,’” Alana said. “They instantly sigh in relief and are able to pause and take a breath.”
Alana’s personal experiences are complemented by her background in strategic planning and project management. Today, she works part-time as a divorce coach and spends the rest of her working hours as a corporate program manager. With this unique professional skillset, Alana offers a measured combination of empathy and strategy to each of her clients.
Taking Care of Herself and Others
As a divorce coach, one of Alana’s primary goals is to help survivors feel less alone in their battles against high-conflict individuals. This is one of the most rewarding parts of her role, but it can also be the most challenging. “Mentally, clients’ stories can take me back to a dark time in my past. Luckily, through the therapy I’ve done to heal, this doesn’t happen as often anymore.”
To stay connected to the present, Alana tries to meditate every day and practice yoga at least five times a week. These regular acts of self-care also give Alana the energy she needs to “push the envelope” and see what she can achieve. “I’m motivated by people who are smarter than me,” Alana said. She actively surrounds herself with intelligent, motivated individuals, whose achievements inspire her to advance in her career and ongoing journey of self-awareness.
As a “very ambitious and goal-oriented person,” Alana balances an intrinsic desire to achieve with the need to pause, slow down, and reconnect to her body. After enduring an emotionally abusive marriage, she intimately understands the physical manifestations of stress and takes precautions to support both herself and her clients.
Looking Back and Moving Forward
Alana’s past informs her current success as a divorce coach and Founder of SurThrive Tribe. Although she often reflects on her journey, she’s continually looking forward to the next achievement -- and not just her own. “I love hearing the excitement in my client’s voice when we get a win in their case, regardless of how big or small,” Alana said.
Every case impacts Alana deeply, but one client stood out in recent memory. “Everything was stacked against her. She came to me with low self-esteem and low confidence after years of emotional abuse. Yet she was determined, like most mothers in abusive situations, to protect her kids at all costs.”
Slowly, Alana helped this client rebuild her confidence, gather and organize evidence, and mentally prepare for her day in court. When the day finally arrived, “she represented herself in court against her ex-husband’s attorney -- and she actually cross-examined witnesses! She was a rockstar and won everything she asked for in her case. I was so excited for her and how far she had come.”
Alana is constantly motivated by her clients’ successes, and she funnels this energy into her work and community engagements. She serves as a board member for Time4Change of NC, a leader of Raleigh Women in Business for Good, a mentor for Women Veterans Support Services, and a member of the National Society of Black Engineers. Recently, she spoke at the North Carolina State Capitol on the need for family court reform through Kayden’s law, and a portion of the speech went viral on TikTok. Between these commitments, Alana managed to find time to write a best-selling book, Was it My Fault?, which captures her story of survival and resilience.
As an HCDC, Alana continues to write, explore, and retell her story on her own terms. In abusive relationships, high-conflict individuals tend to “control narrative,” she said: “Their main focus is to maintain a self-imposed image and crush survivor support systems, with children often used as weapons to assert control.” This phenomenon is “heartbreaking,” yet it’s also one of the many reasons why Alana continues to invest in this work, and to inspire clients to reclaim, rewrite, and ultimately share their own stories.
For more information about Alana and the SurThrive Tribe, please visit her website. In the meantime, stay tuned for our next featured HCDC! We’re excited to share the incredible stories and advocacy work of our graduates.
