Meet Monica Herber

Monica Herber, the creator of The Joyful Unknown, is a Certified Life and Marriage Coach. In the last 3 years, she has been successfully working with clients, helping them find and choose Joy, during great difficulties and deep suffering. Monica has helped individuals and married couples discover the redemptive meaning of their sufferings, allowing them the space to reengage in their vocations and enjoy life again. Her passion as coach is to help her clients move from mere survival into living, and eventually thriving!

Monica has been happily married for almost 15 years to her best friend Nathan. In 2015, after 7 years of struggling with infertility, they adopted their son, Caiden Emmanuel, when he was 3 months old. At birth, Caiden survived a severe loss of oxygen, resulting in spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy, microcephaly, severe epilepsy, and global developmental delays.

The Joyful Unknown was born out of Monica’s own battle for joy, a painful but necessary struggle toward faith-filled acceptance of her son’s prognosis. From this place of authentic joy, her desire to coach others experiencing difficult challenges or significant suffering, find and choose joy again, began. 

 A native New Yorker and daughter of immigrant parents, Monica graduated from Binghamton University in 1997 with a bachelor’s degree in Comparative Literature. She went on to pursue a career in acting after she graduated from Carnegie Mellon University/Moscow Art Theatre with an MFA. Monica worked Off-Broadway, in some television and independent films, and did lots of auditioning for several years. After September 11th, 2001, God called Monica toward a new dream for her life, so she began her journey back home to her Faith. A powerful experience in Adoration brought her back into the grace of the sacraments and life was never the same. As a result, Monica received her BSN in Nursing, became a Registered Nurse in 2005, worked at NYU Langone’s recovery rooms, the cardiovascular care unit, and most recently at Prisma Outpatient Surgery Center in SC. 

 After falling in love with her husband at her first-ever catholic retreat, Monica became devoted to ministry.  She went on to assist her husband in leading Frassati Fellowship NYC, one of the largest Catholic young adult ministries in New York City, as well as serving as a ministry leader from 2009 to 2014, leading and organizing bible studies, retreats, monthly Holy Hours and Fellowship Dinners, giving talks, as well as serving on prayer teams and music ministry. During this time, Monica became trained in UnBound deliverance prayer, helping others live in the freedom of Christ.

She now enjoys southern living with her family in Greenville, South Carolina.