Why I became a coach
Guess what? I didn’t set out to become a coach. That wasn’t what uni me even knew about. Over 25 years ago, all I knew about coaching was about sports coaching but that was it. I wasn’t into sports even if my mum did make me take tennis lessons which ended up hurting my knees, back and shoulders as I had to run around the court.
But while I didn’t know much about coaching then, what I have always been fascinated about are stories; the stories we tell, the stories we are given and that mysterious place when the two no longer fit together.
I became a writer, speaker and advocate, drawing on my own experiences of living with chronic illness and pain, and on the experiences of others whose lives don’t always fit neatly into the systems around them. Being late diagnosed and in my diva era of perimneopause has given a fire of purpose like never before.
Over these past few years on my own journey of accepting my chronic conditions and life, I began to notice something.
We can become very good at trying to fix ourselves. We love a good fix right? So quick, so easy. Done and dusted.
We look for the right answer, the right strategy, the right way to cope. We adapt. We push through. We try to become more resilient. And sometimes, without realising it, we can spend so much energy trying to fit ourselves into a version of life that no longer works for us that we lose sight of what we actually need.
The near lose of my right eye sight due to a large detached retinal tear means that after 3 surgeries, I am seeing things much more clearly. And this and my own random injuries and experiences have taught me that life is rarely that straightforward.
Capacity can change. Circumstances change. Our bodies change. Work changes. Our sense of identity can change too. Sometimes the question isn't “How do I get back to who I was?” but “Who am I now, and what might be possible from here?”
This is where coaching became important to me. In times of my own personal transformation, I had coaching. I needed someone to just hold space for me while I worked things out. And that stayed with me.
So I trained as a Workplace Disability Coach because I wanted to create a space where people could step away from the pressure to have everything figured out. A space to think, explore, notice patterns and perhaps look at their situation from a different angle.
My narrative coaching approach
My approach is grounded in narrative coaching, lived experience and systems thinking. But, most importantly, it is grounded in the belief that you are the expert in your own life.
I am not there to fix you, diagnose you or tell you what you should do.
I am there to be curious with you.
To listen.
To ask questions that might help you see something differently.
And to help you find a way forward that makes sense for your life, not somebody else's version of what your life should look like.
Coaching feels like a natural next chapter for me because it brings together so much of what I have learned through writing, advocacy, disability and lived experience.
Perhaps, in the end, it comes back to stories.
Not changing your story into something more acceptable. But creating enough space to discover what the next chapter might look like.
I love to write, but now, I help people create their next chapter in the story of their life.
What might your next chapter look like?
You don't need to have the answer before you start. That's what coaching is for.
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