There are seasons in a woman's life where something inside begins to shift.

 About Karen Rothstein, Founder, Transformation by Design, Inc.

There are seasons in a woman’s life when something inside her begins to shift.

Sometimes it arrives quietly. A whisper. A restlessness she cannot name. Sometimes it comes as a threshold moment with children leaving home, a marriage evolving, or dissolving, a long-held dream refusing to stay buried. And sometimes it arrives as loss. The kind that splits time into before and after.

Whatever brought you here, you are standing at one of those thresholds now.

Transformation has always been my language.

For years, I walked beside women in midlife reinvention. These are women standing in empty nests, wondering who they were without constant caretaking, women who have built successful lives and yet felt an ache for more depth, more meaning, more truth. I helped them design change intentionally. Not reactively. We examined beliefs. We strengthened nervous systems. We told the truth about what was no longer working. And we built what came next with courage.

Then my own life cracked open.

When my husband died, transformation was no longer theory. It was bone-deep. Grief rearranged me. It stripped away what was ornamental and revealed what was essential. I found myself in the in-between space so many women quietly inhabit  not who I had been, not yet who I was becoming.

That experience did not change my work. It sharpened it.

Today, my work has deepened into the sacred terrain of grief and identity reconstruction. I guide women through the shock of loss, through the fog of disorientation, through the slow reassembly of self. Some are in fresh grief. Some are years beyond the funeral yet still feel suspended between worlds. Others are facing profound midlife transitions that feel like a quieter kind of loss.

Grief may be the doorway. But the work is about becoming.

I bring both lived experience and disciplined skill to this work — hypnosis, nervous system regulation, archetypal and symbolic frameworks, strategic coaching, and practical integration. Not to bypass your pain or turn your suffering into a slogan. But to help you understand what is happening inside you and work with it consciously, with intention and care.

In our work together, you are not rushed. You are not fixed. You are not pitied.

You are witnessed. You are steadied. You are strengthened.

Clients often tell me they feel both softer and stronger. More anchored. More honest. More able to make decisions that align with who they are now rather than who they used to be.

I believe loss can initiate a depth we would never choose but would not trade. I believe identity can be reauthored without erasing what has been loved. I believe transformation can be shaped with intention.

If you are standing at a threshold, whether it arrived quietly or shattered the air around you, there is a way forward that honors both your grief and your becoming.

You are not finished. You are unfolding.

And this next chapter can be designed with wisdom, intention, and care.

If you feel ready to begin, I would be honored to walk beside you.