Wanting to help others was born of needing help. My difficulties in life began in my late teens with a serious illness that doctors didn't have an answer for and caused me to experience deep depression and suicidal tendencies. With help, I went on a journey that led me to find out how I could move from illness to wellness, including body and mind, and to a place within me called ‘happy’. Who doesn’t want to be happy? Everyone does. This feeling of not being 'happy' led me to question and rethink what I was here for.
Many challenges could have been the reason why I wasn’t happy, especially the ones that can really take us down, including serious illness, depression, loneliness, losses, the death of loved ones, and a deep sense of insecurity and grief.
Fortunately, I took the necessary first step we all need to take: I asked for help. This is when teachers and guidance started showing up, talking about consciousness and how what we are seeking, we already are. I was introduced to a book called 'Happy For No Reason: 7 Steps to Being Happy from the Inside Out by Marci Shimoff'. Is that possible? Can we just be happy?’ All our lives, we have attached our happiness to something or someone. When we don’t have them, we feel ‘unhappy’? When we have them and lose them, we feel devastated.
What we really want is an inner feeling of freedom and peace.
The understanding in this book set me on a course that led me to take coach training that was being offered by the author to teach her method to individuals and groups. I realized that my ‘calling’ to help others was actually what I was meant to do. It was recommended to become a certified coach, which led to many other teachers and trainings, including Meditation, Conscious Breath Work, Qigong, Heart Coherence, Emotional Freedom Techniques, Psychological Kinesiology, and The Emotion Code over the next 15+ years.
I have had many extreme challenges, changes, and traumas. With the proven and effective life skills, tools, and practices I share in my TLC coaching practice, and with the understanding that everything is for our transformation, evolution, and growth, I have been able to transcend them.
This is not without help.
Do you need help?
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On a personal note-
As a coach, I know that personal experience enables us to help others. I know the pain of deep personal grief, and of being traumatized by sudden loss and feeling depressed at a deep level, and of living in fear of the unknown. I also know that without the wise guidance from mentors and coaches, I would not have been able to live the full life I do now. One of my mentors helped me realize that moving out of the dark and into the light happens when I give more of myself to those who need it. In other words, to move out of my pain, I needed to go into my heart and follow the guidance.
The answer came when it was recommended that I volunteer. The first volunteer opportunity was to help at an animal shelter. I know that animals are here to help us receive unconditional love, and I have always had many animals in my life that were definitely more than just pets, who became part of my family and brought joy and laughter.
Then, I started to volunteer in my community to help others and to be involved in more than myself and my own pain.
Until the experience I labeled ‘tragedy and trauma’, I was working more than full time and thought I was ‘too busy’ to add in volunteer ‘work.’
In 2018, at age 65, I had, at this point, been through other major difficulties in my life, including serious illness, the death of parents and pets, being a single parent, divorce, moving many times, and financial stress. They too were hard, but didn’t have the depth of pain when my loving partner of 15 years was suddenly diagnosed with leukaemia and died in my arms 2 months later.
Life would never be the same. This experience caused me to go into a state of shock that took me to my knees. I felt as though I was sleepwalking through life. I looked awake, but I felt like I was mostly in pain. Not physical pain, which did manifest later on, but a pain that had no remedy. This was never going away. I truly thought I would never experience feeling happy again.
Grief is a special kind of pain. We all have this experience at some point in our lives. We can’t prepare for it or learn about it so we can have a different experience of it. It is felt after a great loss. The kind of loss that carries grief and how you experience it is personal to you. Losses in life that include the loss of a job or a partner through divorce or when someone, such as a family member or friend, moves away, or when you move from being in a home for a long time, among others, are different because they can have a replacement and the grief subsides.
My personal grief experience with this death was unlike any other. I felt numb, frantic, depressed, and in despair, afraid, alone, and as though a part of me died when he did.
I tell you this because if I hadn’t listened and asked for help and guidance from others who have the training and began to volunteer, I would still be grieving the loss of not only my loving partner but also my happier, healthier life.
I also wouldn’t have met and adopted from the shelter where I volunteered my new loving partner, Lucy the Lovable Dog, who fills every day with more love, joy, laughter, and happiness than I could have ever known!
