A Word, a Coach & a Tribe, thriving while surviving pandemic
My nephew recently shared a young man’s ironic Instagram post:
“I can’t believe we stayed up and shouted, ‘Happy New Year’ for this bull5#!t!”
And when I was his age, I might have felt the same way about 2020.
So, what difference does three or four decades make?
Resilience born of experience, perspective, lessons learned and the luck of a level playing field.
Where it began
Nearly thirty years ago I picked up a book that changed my life, The Artist’s Way, a course in discovering and recovering your creative self.
Of course, I didn’t know that then.
It was the eighties – Phil Donahue’s talk show format gave rise to Oprah and everyone was recovering from something, on air.
Reflecting on it recently, I realised that the book worked for me then, and has continued to work in the present, because the methodology reflected the framework and language of the times - as I journeyed into adulthood.
Julia Cameron had given voice to the familiar, with a unique and original assimilation of the wisdom and experience of the then classic Think and Grow Rich (Napolean Hill 1937); How to Win Friends and Influence People (Dale Carnegie 1936); and The Big Book (of Alchoholics Anonymous 1939) - which her storytelling style mimics in the use of one to reinforce every lesson .
Added to this, is the work of her contemporaries whose books were published in the same era:
Inspiration for Morning Pages may well lie in the work of Natalie Goldberg's methods, later written in Writing Down the Bones (1986), and
Believing Mirrors & Touchstones come up in Barbara Sher's many books which are outlined, as I was saddened to learn, in her recent obituary.
Lessons in coping with #Crazymakers, #PoisonousPlaymates and #WetBlankets reinforced in all her books, plus the prescriptions and exercises around Honest Changes, Shame and Fear, can be found in the work of many, including Melody Beattie, Codependent No More (1986); Janet G. Woititz', Adult Children of Alcoholics (1983); Judi Hollis' Fat is a Family Affair (1985), at a time when writers and practitioners were moving the science of addiction research and recovery programs into public discourse.
Two decades later, in my early days in Ireland, the language of recovery or an openness to ‘counselling’ were not part of the culture.
Efforts to frame my practice as encouraging of assertiveness, career, or culture change were often met with - "Sure, you can get away with saying/doing that, you're American.”.
Cameron's series and the group format provided a language and a framework to educate (not counsel) in a way that helped participants become emboldened and more confident. I was able to safely reflect on my experiences using Cameron's language and her tools. Groups were inspired by their peers; they told their stories and we all saw ourselves in a new light.
The Word of the Year
Over much of the last decade I was content to view myself as self-employed.
As a coach - I’d never thought of myself as a business owner. Ironic, as much of the work was focused on teaching entrepreneurship and helping people turn their ideas into livelihoods.
And then I met a coach whose focus is on creatives. She spoke my language and as we well know - “When the student is ready, the teacher appears.”
I came across her Word of the Year.
It was as much about a word as setting an intention.
And when you do - a funny thing happens. While you have no plan for the ‘how’ - you seem to end the year having accomplished what was necessary and shed or undone what you didn’t know were obstacles slowing you down. I moved from “Independent” In 2017 and by year end I’d shed two once valued associations. In January, I’d had no conscious awareness that they’d ceased to serve my purposes. In 2018, I chose “Grounded”, and concluded the year confident in a streamlined and solid plan. In 2019, it was Action – and again unconsciously – by the end of January I’d launched a new initiative – and by December, I had up-skilled in marketing and technology, to launch the my first online course.
It was “Focus” in 2020, amusing because, really what else was there to do? The result was fully subscribed Spring groups to beta test the process, a Summer spent applying the learning and adding courses along with the professional help needed to automate the processes.
The Tribe
That professional help? I didn’t need to look far to find it.
From my earliest days, birth in fact, my life was set on track by the appearance of people I refer to as my “family of choice”.
Introducing groups to my earliest work here means that both personally and professionally I was pandemic-prepared and not isolated in spite of the absence of a family of origin on this side of the pond.
And hence the tag line for the practice and my life: #Don’tGoItAlone.
