No one can suffer enough to heal the world
From my time as a mom who loved her kids but really didn't love the day-to-day of motherhood, to years doing all I could to survive being a teacher and administrator in broken systems that demanded way more than they gave to me or my students (whether they were 2 or 22) . . . my inability to suffer enough to make it all better drove me to find a new way forward.
I used the critical thinking skills I’d learned while getting a Ph.D. to question some of the expectations and obligations I assumed to be non-negotiable.
More importantly, I experimented.
I experimented with following my inner wisdom, my desires, and the things that brought me joy instead of running my life primarily from a place of obligation, guilt and shame.
It felt scandalous, scary and downright wrong. And also . . . it felt like a path that might make me feel fully alive again. So I kept going.
Step-by-step I made some big changes and took some big risks. Here are a couple examples:
I left my faith community where most of my friends and family were because it wasn’t giving me enough room to breathe (especially as a woman)?
I stepped out of a tenure track job at a great university and started training to be a life coach.
I bought an island, based primarily on a surge of energy that I’ve come to know is my intuition/soul speaking to me. And after owning it had done the healing work in me and my family that it was meant to do, I let it go - even though it disappointed people I love.
When I left my faith, I felt alone — for awhile — until I found new more expansive spiritual communities.
When I left my academic career (at the age of 47), I questioned my sanity.
And when I hurt people I loved to be true to myself. I felt absolutely terrible for awhile.
But, I don’t regret any of these choices.
It’s not that I have no regrets at all. I’ve also made some big (and expensive!) choices that led to outcomes I didn’t enjoy.
But the benefits of this new way of being have FAR outweighed the downsides. And those benefits include an increased capacity to take action in support of race and gender equity, healing and justice, as well as more health, better relationships with my husband, my kids and my sister, more capacity for joy and relaxation, and a deeper connection to the Divine.
I promise you. I’m onto something here.
The Thriving for Equity Coaching® Methodology didn’t develop overnight. It has deep, deep roots.
It grew out of what I learned through my personal experience of striving, and sometimes just barely surviving, in order to be the change I wanted to see in the world.
It grew out of over 10 years of working with clients who were, and are, deeply committed to creating a more just world, and who wanted to find some hope that it’s possible.
It grew from my propensity to “do what I cannot do in order to learn how to do it” (Van Gogh)
Thriving for Equity coaching is a synthesis of what I learned from my academic study, my experiences as an educator and administrator, multiple modalities of healing, several intensive certification programs, stacks of books, myraid mentors and colleagues, and a lot of time in Nature.
As I continued on this healing and learning journey:
I started listening to my body and learning about trauma and how it shows up in our bodies and lives, and how we can release it.
I started trusting my inner wisdom and learned more about they ways distrusting, emotions, the body and women’s sexuality are rooted in and support current and past systems of oppression - which helped me to honor what they had to offer me.
I worked with shame and guilt as they arose and noticed how they also served the very systems I wanted to dismantle. I noticed that they never truly expanded my capacity to love. I saw how they kept me frozen at times, and led me to overgive and overwork harming my body at others, and I began to make different choices.
I trained in a heart-centered approach to racial justice to increase my skill and capacity to act effectively in alignment with my deepest held values. I partnered with BIPOG colleagues. I started speaking up and taking action in the white-dominant spiritual, wellness and coaching communities I’m part of.
And despite being uncoordinated and generally exercise-averse I became a certified Qoya-Inspired movement teacher, a practice that helps us remember that we are wise, wild and free. In Qoya each dancer is invited to follow what feels right in their body. And there’s no way to do it wrong. It’s the perfect way to practice letting go of perfection (which, in case you didn’t know, is a characteristic of white-supremacist, capitalist, patriarchy).
What I practice with my body, I also practice with my life.
And I invite clients to do the same.
That’s why the Thriving for Equity coaching Methodology integrates:
Trauma-informed body-centered (somatic) coaching techniques,
Nervous-system regulation practices,
Emotional empowerment techniques and practices,
Movement,
Specialized journaling and imaginative practices that open up new possibilities you haven’t been able to see before,
Mindset work,
And for those who want to go there — practices that support financial and sexual healing (the latter I do only with women-identifying people).
There’s a good bit of woo-woo magic available — whatever version works for you. But, there’s no spiritual bypassing here.
We do all of this transformative self-development work within an understanding of the historical and cultural contexts within which all this personal growth happens - to include whatever power dynamics and cultural differences may be present within the coaching container. (Thank you Rutgers-Camden Ph.D. for teaching me how to deconstruct the cultural constructions we often take for granted, and to my mentors in racial justice and healing work - among them Andréa Ranae Johnson, Aminata Sol Plantwalker Firewoman, Erika Fitz, and Ijumaa Jordan.)
I’d love to help you discover what your version of Thriving for Equity is.
As I write these words, I get so excited thinking about what’s possible for you— and how it will ripple out into your family, community, and the world — that I can feel my words speeding up and my heart beating faster.
I feel a surge of energy moving up through my chest as if it will burst out through the top of my head like a fountain!
It’s kinda fun; but it also makes my head buzz and gives me the sense that I’ve lost connection with my body.
And, as I hinted at above, I’ve learned that with and in my body is the very best place to be.
So . . . it’s time to slow things down a bit. It’s time for what Tara Brach calls a “Sacred Pause.”
Want to join me?
If you’re a no for now, but still want to learn more about how I can support you, skip to the options for coaching below.
And if you’re a maybe . . .
Remember, if you choose to pause with me now it’s not a forever yes to slowing down. You can return to rushing and pushing hard whenever you want. Even if it’s mid-pause. You can change your mind.
You’re always in charge.
Here’s the invitation:
