Why Life Coaching?
How did I get here?
There is usually a story behind every Life Coach…something that inspired them to want to help guide people to become the best versions of themselves. This is my story.
I’m not sure if you have experienced this or not…a time when everything in life lines up and you feel as if all the stars are aligned. This is what happened for me in 2015. Three years prior, my then boyfriend and I, took a leap of faith and moved to California from Park City, Utah. We worked hard to build a life in San Diego. I was hired part time with an educational publishing company and I finally started making money that year. Coming from teaching, I was thrilled when my first bonus was more than I had made in an entire year of teaching. We bought a house, got married and in May, the last star aligned; we found out we were going to have a baby. Getting pregnant was not a romantic act for us. In fact, there was nothing sexy about picking up the “specimen” from the clinic and showing up to our doctor’s office a couple of hours later for the implantation. Nonetheless, our second IUI worked. We were ecstatic. The year I found out I was pregnant, we traveled a lot. So much, that I wrote a blog to our new baby titled, “Oh, the Places You’ve Already Been.”
Once we got past the three month mark and made our announcement to the world, I settled in, as most pregnant women do, and dreamed about becoming a mother. It was a completely normal pregnancy. I was an older mom, but aside from that, it was textbook. At six months, we decided to leave our doctor, who we loved, to pursue a more natural birth in a birthing center with a midwife. I felt completely comfortable with my decision and knew it was right for our family. Life could not have gotten any better, but apparently it could get much worse.
On January 25, 2016, around 1:00 in the afternoon, I felt a sharp pain. I was just finishing a up a review at work. After 9 long months, the time was finally here; I was having contractions. It was two days before my due date. My husband walked in shortly thereafter and we called our Douala. She asked us to time the contractions. They were about five minutes apart and 45 seconds in length. She instructed us to get in touch with our midwife. All I could think about was getting into a tub of warm water. As my husband took a shower, I laid in the bath, breathing through the pain. We were at the birthing center by 3:00 that afternoon. When my mid wife checked my cervix, I was at a 4. She told me, in all seriousness, that I should go home or walk around for a little while. I thought she had lost her mind. The pain was only just starting, but I knew I wasn’t going anywhere. She left to start getting the room ready. When she came back 10 minutes later, checked me again, I was at a 7. I will never forget the words, “Well, it looks like we are having a baby.” Everything sped up from there. The baby was coming so fast, my parents didn’t even have the address to the birthing center. For you moms who have given birth without an epidural, you know this pain. It is like nothing I could ever have described. It was so intense, all I could focus on was breathing. I was barely in the room as I was somewhere floating just above my huge birthing body that was laying in the tub.
This picture was taken minutes before I was asked to get out of the tub.
Our midwife was checking the baby’s heart rate every eight minutes. One check, I heard her say, “Heart tones are good.” The next time she checked was when our lives began to change in a way we did not see coming. She looked at me, very sternly and said, “I need you to get out of the tub.” That was an incredible feat as moving seemed like a terrible idea. She was serious, so I obeyed her command. What happened next is a complete blur. They laid me on the bed and put an oxygen mask on. I heard someone say, “Her water broke, call 911.” Before I knew it, I was being wheeled through the birthing center past incredibly worried faces. I was whisked away in the ambulance. It was a short ride to the hospital. Strangely, I felt no fear. I actually felt a strong sense of peace. I felt God’s presence and was comforted by it. I am forever grateful for those calm few minutes before we were thrust into the biggest storm of our lives.
The words that came out of the doctor’s words that night echo in my mind still to this day, nearly five years later. “We have lost your baby’s heart tones.” I remember vividly thinking to myself, “Well, aren’t you the doctor? Isn’t it your job to find them?” I had no idea what she meant. She said it again. “What does that mean.” I remember asking her It means, “We’ve lost your baby.” The grief that washed over me was like nothing I had experienced before. All the thoughts came flooding in. But the one that was the most top of my mind was, “How am I going to get this baby out?” I asked for a C-section. My midwife whispered that was a possibility, but that I would have to heal from major surgery on top of everything else. I knew enough to know that I didn’t want that. An epidural, “Give me an epidural.” Again my midwife told me I could have one, but that it would likely slow down the birth. This had already gone on long enough. I couldn’t bare to think of it lasting another second. So, I looked around the room at the doctor, nurses, midwife, my husband. They all had a look of pain, but also a longing to take this pain away from me. They all wanted to help, but none of them could. I knew this was up to me and me alone, so I began pushing as every contraction took over. There was a clock on the wall in front of my bed. I watched it go around 3.5 times. Panting, sweating, screaming for it to end, I pushed and pushed. I remember thinking, one of these pushes, this baby is going to come out. At roughly 8:30 pm, our baby boy, Jack Martin Brooks entered the world and our lives were forever changed.
They put him to my chest, skin to skin. I willed him to take a breath. I sobbed as I held his lifeless body next to mine. He was beautiful…a perfect little baby boy, but he never took a breath. The day we became parents was the saddest day of our lives.
The hours, days and weeks that came next were a mixture of all the raw emotions in life. Our family and friends gathered in close. They enveloped us with their love, food, wine, conversations and presence. I have never felt such pain, but also support. It was the yin and yang of life. The very best and worst all tied up into one. We survived, one day at a time.
What does this story have to do with becoming a Life Coach? At the time of Jack’s birth, I was in a job that I didn’t like. You know the one I started with. It was one of the stars that aligned just the year earlier. When you experience a loss the way we did, it is normal to start to evaluate everything in life. Priorities and values become laser focused and I realized that I didn’t align with the company I was working for anymore. The problem was, I was also experiencing grief in a way that made it difficult to think straight. I was having a hard time comprehending simple tasks. There was no way I could interview for another job, so I coasted. I did what I could and I bid my time.
As the years rolled on, I started to notice how much the experience had changed me. Not only did we lose our son, but I also lost my confidence. I have always been the type of person who could achieve anything I wanted. I always joke that the only reason I didn’t become the first female president of the United States was because I changed my mind. But now I was having a difficult time finding my way. I felt lost, insecure, unworthy and seemed to lack the confidence I knew I needed to move to the next phase of my life. I reached out for help. I had worked with a coach in the past and I made a call to see if she would take me on as a client. To my delight, she said yes.
Our weekly sessions became the best part of my week. A time where I could focus solely on what I needed to do to rebuild myself. Through her questions and my sole searching, I felt a new sense of peace wash over me. I felt the spark that I thought I had lost forever start to flicker in the background. I brainstormed ideas, shared them with my life coach, she would press me on my thinking to make sure it was what I really wanted and before I knew it, I was enrolled in a program to become a life coach. That brings me to date.
As I write this, Jack would be almost 5. Our daughter just turned 3.
I have learned an incredible amount about mindset, resilience, forgiveness, empathy and compassion.
I have learned that sometimes in life, we need to ask for help to push us along our path.
I have learned that I can help others do the same.
I have learned that the human spirit is stronger than most forces and can withstand the toughest of situations.
I have learned that sometimes we need another person to help guide us back to ourselves.
I have learned that as a life coach, I have to honor of guiding others.
Through my own coaching process, I gained back what I had lost. I am a different person than I was before I had Jack, but that is ok. Our experiences shape us, but we also have the ability to choose whether they break us. Jack is now my guiding light. I decided that I was going to live life for both of us.
“You either get bitter or you get better. It’s that simple. You either take what has been dealt to you and allow it to make you a better person or you allow it to tear you down. The choice does not belong to fate. It belongs to you!”
