What brought me to coaching?

I decided to become a coach while going through a separation from my ex-husband. We had been together for 27 years, and the relationship had gone toxic. I was looking at the very real possibility that I would soon be divorced. At the same time, I had been caring for my mother, who had Alzheimer’s disease for 14 years. My caregiving role was all-consuming. I would work my full-time job and then care for her in the evenings. I knew that her disease was progressing and that she soon wouldn’t be with me anymore. I had also recently had a miscarriage after a very long and arduous fertility journey. A few years before this, I had developed a neurological condition that had taken over my life, and to get to the bottom of healing it, I had embarked on therapy. Therapy helped, but it also kicked up a lot of trauma from my past and my childhood. I felt really unearthed and lost. I kept walking around wondering how I was going to build a new life and dream a new dream. I had no concept of what life could be without marriage and children and family.

Then I had a dream. In the dream, there was this coach doing cartwheels on a stage in front of an auditorium full of people. Everyone was clapping and hollering wildly, excited about what he was doing. Then this very loud voice came in and said to me, “You could do a better job than this guy; what if you became a coach?” The voice was so loud that it woke me from my sleep, and I felt compelled to write down what it said. A couple of days later, I went to coffee with a friend from work; she had just been certified as a life coach. She looked me in the eyes and very sternly said, “This is for you; you go and train as a coach; this is for you.” I really didn’t feel like I was in a position to be anyone’s coach. I was such a hot mess, and my life was in shambles at middle age! I had lost so much, and I was staring even more loss in the face.

Nevertheless, I looked into coaching because I felt like I needed to dream a new dream. I needed to want my life. I needed to feel like I could create a life that was worth living. I needed to walk towards something that wanted to be born in my life instead of clinging to what was trying to leave. So, I did some research, attended free events with different coaching institutes, and landed at the Life Purpose Institute, where I was certified in life and spiritual coaching. I had passed my final exam and was in the middle of doing my coaching hours to be certified when my ex-husband and I decided to get a divorce, and then my mother passed away.

I had never been so devastated and lost and gutted in my life. I was living like a teenager at my sister’s house after having built a life with a man that I had met at the age of seventeen. My mother, who was very much my anchor, had left me. I was quite literally out of my mind. I took 6 months off of my coaching certification to pull myself together. Then I took back my clients and reached the finish line. I had accomplished this wonderful thing through so much hardship, but my neurological condition had gotten so much worse. I spent so much of my life throwing up and in pain, unable to function like a normal person. That is when my sister told me about someone who had succeeded in helping people with my condition. I took a leap of faith, in my desperation, and it really paid off. It also started me on my journey with Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP). I never thought about specializing in NLP coaching, but this is where the path has led me, and I am so grateful because it facilitated my healing from my condition and now allows me to help others who are suffering.

Prior to this journey, I had really tried every kind of healing modality that you could think of, including the very conventional and very alternative methods. From my late 20s onwards, I had become single-minded about healing my emotional wounds and followed every last soul crumb the Universe laid along my path. I read books, I became a Reiki master, an axiatonal alignment practitioner; I trained for years as an akashic records reader, and I trained in DBT; I tried past-life regression, Egypto-Essenien healing, ayurveda, homeopathy, naturopathy, macrobiotics, psychotherapy, and countless other therapies and modalities for healing. Everything I tried brought me a little closer to healing myself, and I am so grateful for all the extraordinary experiences and learnings that came to me along the way.

I started my training in NLP and went for two one-on-one sessions with an NLP Coach and Trainer named Surinder Gill. I had unearthed a lot of my trauma and had healed so much through therapy, but I still was having a neurological episode very often. At the time, I was having an episode about once every week and a half. It had taken over my life. After my second NLP session, my symptoms had become a lot lighter and much less frequent. Today, I very rarely feel symptoms at all. NLP helped me a lot. It was such an important part of my journey, but I believe we all have our own unique path to follow and there is never just one answer for everyone.

I am nothing if not perseverant. I believe the Universe dropped me so many beautiful soul crumbs to follow to get to where I am now: the many therapies, healing modalities, the dreams, the people who said the right thing at the right time, the healers. It all led me forward. Looking back now, I was trying for something that I didn’t actually know existed. I had hoped that I was walking toward a place of peace beyond my suffering, but I had no actual proof that that place existed. I just kept putting one foot in front of the other. I was just living on faith because I needed to be working towards something. I never thought that I would be able to say that there definitively is a place beyond that suffering.

Then one day, I realized that I was living in this place of peace. Not just a fleeting peace, but an abiding peace. There was a peacefulness permeating my body and spirit. I had a feeling of joy, excitement and passion and purpose igniting my cells. No one is more shocked than me to know that this could be possible! And yet, life is a school; we are always growing and overcoming and learning more and more with each hurdle placed along our paths. As a coach, I am always getting coached by other coaches for lots of things that come up in my life. This is part of my journey of learning and growing. But I can attest to the fact that there is another side, and I am so grateful to have arrived here.