HELLO. I’M NEW HERE.
I have never written a blog before, and just the idea of it makes my blood run cold. You see, I am an intimacy junkie. I’m in my element when I’m one-on-one with another person - when I am using my combined empathy, compassion and listening skills to offer a unique environment for someone to exhale, take off their public masks, and finally dive into who they really are. It is in these moments that I know I am living my purpose. But when I begin to feel publicly exposed and vulnerable I just clam up. An internal alarm system inside me goes off and I am suddenly locked up. Maybe this is part of the reason I do what I do. The old phrase, wounded healer, comes to mind. We are always fascinated by what we have always craved ourselves. For me it was permission to be my authentic self. I see who other people are so clearly, and yet when the opportunity arises for me to be seen I choose to hide for fear that I won’t belong.
I have been on the receiving side of therapy and coaching and let me tell you, it is amazing. It is so luxurious to have the safe container provided by a trained professional on a regularly scheduled basis that you know you can look forward to when life is throwing you nasty curveballs, not to mention the inner critics that go haywire sometimes. I allow these private sessions to be the place where I am truly seen. It is one of the rarer gifts that we as humans get to experience - being really listened to with no other purpose or expectation from the listening party except to allow you to voice what is true for you. Even the truths that make us feel uncomfortable, sad, angry or ashamed. To have the support from someone else who is solely there as your witness while you wade deeper into your own emotional muck, and learn through these experiences that you actually are able to handle it.
I am a believer in “walking the walk”, so after having done the personal work and grappled with my own limiting beliefs, facing my fear of creating content for a public platform is the natural next step. Now, as the world begins to try to rebuild, it feels as good a time as any to open my little corner of the internet and share my ideas, impressions and perspectives on how we can all learn to live more aligned with our authentic, wholehearted selves. This is my offering with my coaching. Along with useful practical material to navigate challenges around life transitions, relationships, and career, I would like to offer myself as your life raft as you make your way across the ocean of human emotion and experience.
My intention with starting this blog is not to give you an easy cut-and-dry list of ways to make you a better human. Let me be clear: you and your life do not need fixing. Believing otherwise is the foundation of most anxiety and depression. The chronic feeling of not-enoughness is pervasive. All of the articles, blog posts and books that claim to offer a solution in “10 easy steps” are only adding fuel to the fire. It appeals to our egos that desperately seek anything that seems to make uncertainty more certain. “Yes, give me the step-by-step instructions!” your ego demands. I’m sorry to break it to you, but life doesn’t work that way. Life is messy and unpredictable.
If this sounds completely unappealing to you, I get it. I studied psychology and coaching, and absorbed all the literature I could find on the topic, precisely because I wanted that “10-step guide to life.” Instead what I learned over the years, is that people are extremely complex and confounding, and at the same time incredibly similar to each other in their basic humanity. And I am still learning every single day. I may just be a few steps ahead on the path, and so my aim is to offer what I have learned thus far on my journey through my own human experience, plenty of therapy, hours of reading, and years of studying psychology and coaching. I hope you will find a fellow human in this blog who keeps trying to better understand the complex workings of our imperfect ways of living, and that just knowing you are not alone or defective in any way is enough to bring you comfort in these uncertain times.