Halló þú! I’m Maja.

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María Lovísa Árnadóttir — known as Maja LOVE
Icelandic writer, life and leadership coach

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I’ve spent nearly two decades helping people find clarity when the lives they’ve built begin to ask something new of them. Some are founders and executives carrying responsibility for many others. Some are navigating grief, change, or a chapter they cannot yet name. Often, they are doing both.

 

I’m interested in the person beneath the role: what they carry, what they long for, and what becomes possible when they have room to tell the truth.

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The life behind the work

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I was born to teenage parents and grew up in Reykjavík. My beginnings taught me to pay attention — to people, to possibility, and to the distance between the life we inherit and the life we might create.

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I became the first in my family to attend university. I studied Interior Architecture abroad, later earned an MBA in Management, built businesses, and found my way into coaching in 2008. Across all of that work, one question kept drawing me in: how do we shape a life that feels like our own?

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For years, I explored that question alongside leaders making consequential decisions about their businesses and their lives. I came to know the private weight that can sit behind a capable exterior.

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Then my own life changed suddenly. My husband, Stefan, died after 28 years together. I became a widow while still being a mother, a coach, and the person everyone knew me to be. Grief asked questions I could not answer with experience or strategy.

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It did not begin my interest in transformation. It made that work more honest. It taught me to stay present when there is no quick resolution, and to respect how much courage it can take simply to begin again.

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What I do

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I work privately with people navigating leadership, loss, growth, and change. Our conversations may begin with a decision at work and lead to a deeper question about identity, relationships, or the life surrounding that work. We make room for both.

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I bring experience in leadership and business, a designer’s eye for patterns and possibilities, and the steadiness that comes from having lived through profound change myself. I will listen carefully, ask direct questions, and help the ones I serve see what is theirs to consider or change. And, what is theirs to release.

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There is no need to arrive with a polished version of yourself.

 

I’m a writer, too

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Writing is how I make sense of what I notice and what I have lived. I write essays about grief, identity, leadership, love, and the quiet ways a life changes from within.

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I’m also writing The Becoming of Grief, a memoir and companion for the lifelong journey of love and loss. You can begin with my essays on the blog.

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If you’re here

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Perhaps you are leading something important. Perhaps something in your life has changed, and the old way of moving through it no longer fits. Perhaps you simply want a place to think honestly, with someone who can meet you there.

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You are welcome to read, to stay a while, or to begin a conversation.

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Explore my writing
Work with Maja