Meet Your Coach - Deanna Byrne

My name is Deanna Byrne, and everything I teach, guide, and hold inside this program was born from the fire of my own grief.

In 2020, my husband died suddenly from a brain aneurysm, no warning, no preparation, just a brutal rupture that tore the center out of my life. And then, as if grief itself wasn’t enough, the world shut down. Overnight, I was forced to grieve in isolation. No community. No support. No soft spaces to collapse into. Just me, my silence, and the reality that nothing would ever be the same.

My Story

Grief cracked me open, not gently, but violently. And in that darkness, something inside me refused to stay broken. I dove head-first into grief coaching accreditation, art therapy, and deeper studies into psychological functioning to understand the way the human brain protects itself in trauma.

Then in 2023, my nervous system delivered a message I could not ignore. I experienced an episode of Transient Global Amnesia, a sudden neurological event where the brain shuts down access to memory to protect itself from overwhelming emotional and physiological stress. It felt like my mind had been wiped clean, a reset button I never asked for, but one my body desperately needed. Looking back, it was my nervous system’s attempt to guard me from years of unresolved trauma layered on top of devastating grief.

And then came 2025, when I was diagnosed with dorsal vagal collapse; a state where the nervous system becomes so overloaded that it drops into shutdown mode. This is not emotional weakness; this is a physiological survival response.

Dorsal vagal collapse happens when the vagus nerve, the core regulator of safety, connection, and emotional processing, becomes overwhelmed and moves into a freeze state. The body numbs, the mind disconnects, energy drains, and the spirit feels locked inside itself. It is the deepest level of nervous system shutdown, where the body protects by shutting down rather than fighting or fleeing.

That diagnosis is what shifted everything.

I increased my training again, this time diving into:

Vagal nerve work
Polyvagal theory applications
Nervous system recovery techniques
Somatic trauma release
Accreditation in expanded somatic therapy

I didn’t just study these modalities, I lived them. I used them. I healed through them. And I now teach them with the fierce compassion of someone who knows the path from collapse back to life.

During this time, my voice began reaching thousands of women around the world. My platforms grew, not because I was trying to be seen, but because women were desperate for honesty, truth, guidance, and a grief coach who has walked through the fire herself. Today, I have helped thousands of widows and grieving women worldwide, offering trauma-informed emotional support, nervous system grounding, and holistic healing resources to women who refuse to heal alone.

The Widow’s Renewal Journey™ is not something I created - it is something I became.

And now, it is my honour to walk beside women who feel like their world has shattered and show them that their breath, their body, their wisdom, and their life can rise again.

My heartbreak became my teacher. My nervous system became my compass. And my healing became the map I now place in the hands of every woman who walks beside me. You do not have to walk this path alone.

- Deanna Byrne