It’s been more than thirty years since I first received my business number. The type of work I have done has shifted several times, but my company motto of “Leave a good wake” has remained constant.
Through these decades, the company has been remade several times over. From researcher to freelance writer, strategic communications advisor to coach, I’ve worked with people who were searching for how to make their words and ideas work better for them. In landing in the coaching world, with a focus on personal development and facing transition, I feel I have found the last manifestation of my work here in this world.
At least it feels that way. Today.
While coaching has occupied me as a vocation since 2014 and the end of my year-long training, helping people has lived in my heart since I was a child. I have always had an easy way with people, weaving in and out of connection, to varying degrees of depth. A decade now as a coach, and as of this writing, 55 years on this planet, has grown in me a capacity to hold space for people, and some tools to do so with care.
One of these tools is a way of being that I call “grounded kindness” and it’s a gentle but firm way of holding people to their development. I’ll talk more about this later but suffice to say this came out of a long period of soul searching around the word “nice” and its replacement in my vocabulary with “kind.” “Grounded” speaks to a feeling of being tethered to something, in this case, a client’s purpose for seeking coaching, in service of my ability to hold them accountable with kindness, so they can get traction on their issue and move into a different place for themselves.