A Different Kind of Life Coach

I have wanted to put pen to my heart so many times in the last several months, but I keep checking my heart before I do. I'm now coming to the wondering that if we waited until our hearts were just right and grounded, as we think they should be, poetry may never have happened, art never created and stories never told. We would have lost a relatable part of our human experience.

I'm not a poet. I can't write a "roses are red" poem to save my life. So I will spare you my attempts.

I am wondering that we can be deeply grounded and deeply turmoiled at the same time. I have been looking for every other way to manage the things of my heart....podcasts and interviews of others, diving into projects, standing up one time (or two) to an injustice via social media posts, meditating.... Maybe sometimes the heart needs to be heard to find its resolution. If I have learned nothing about myself in 46 years it is this.... Injustice boils within me and writing is a space I have often worked it out.

I am angry.

I am sad.

I am angry often.

I am so disappointed in humanity.

I am broken for our country.

I am continually surprised by the lack of love in people around me...people that once said (or even still say) they love people.

I am overwhelmed by the selfishness of our country and the choice to let it go unchecked.

I despise this "ME" world.

I'm so exhausted with stupid conspiracy theories and my tolerance for the conversations is deeply exhausted.

I'm so very tired of "christians" giving Jesus a terrible name. You make him ugly, violent, intolerant, hypocritical, hateful and racist. If that is your "god" you look just like him.

I'm so tired of people saying they love everyone but have a long list of things you can't be to get that love. "christians" are the leaders in this game. Jesus loved all the "unlovelies" but "christians" love you if it was your past life. For an unconditional love theology, it sure reeks of conditions. And, frankly, I can't keep living up to the rules of what's acceptable anymore. It's exhausting and, honestly, plain cruel. It's so counter Jesus anyway.

I WANT THE NEW NORMAL....not this normal.

I'm tired of balancing the word shame in a white privilege world. We should be deeply ashamed of what we've done (and it is collective). I would one day love to experience "white privilege" as the "privilege" to shut this shit down....to lead our culture in love. I think white privilege should mean "responsibility and reconciliation". But instead, it means "my rights at the cost of my neighbor." That was still too nice...I know...it actually means blindness, self focus, denial, hate, discrimination, greed, excuses.

I keep wanting to find a happy ending and solution to these issues. I'm a problem solver by design. And I think THAT is what leaves me feeling helpless. I can't fix this. If this pandemic has shown me anything, it's that who we are has always been there...we just have permission to let it show now. It's ok now to fight for me alone. It's ok to not consider my neighbor. It's ok to own a firearm simply for the purpose of killing a human (protection or my right...does it matter? That's what its for.) It's ok to hate. It's ok to look out for me even if my neighbor or my friends suffer. It's ok to believe stupid as long as it serves my agenda of "me". It's ok to make money a more important value than life (and you don't have to be pharmaceutical or large corp to show it now....you can just be everyday you and stand on your right for money over the life of me, your neighbor). I'm tired of humanity being ok with hate.

But...

I believe there are humans that love and feel just like I do. I believe there are many of you screaming inside (and out) because you want a new normal. I believe there is kindness, healing and beauty still available to us. I believe we are capable of so much more than this.

Today I'm going to hug my grandson and teach him to love everything he sees.

I'm going to love my husband the way HE needs to be loved. I'm going to love my daughters and their families right where they are. I'm going to celebrate who they are and sit in awe of them. They are strong, passionate, smart and wildly intuitive. I'm going to enjoy the justice that sits inside them and tell them to keep fighting for it.

I have come to the personal resolution that in my quest to unite my whole self - mind, body, soul- I will need to also allow anger to exist. If I continue to say that anger should be eradicated in order for me to be healthy, then I am destined to become an angry person rather than someone who is angry at bad things.

This comes with great social risk. You might not like this part of me. You might not agree with me. You might think I'm too much. You might think I invoke shame on others.

But I will challenge you, if you're still reading this, that if you could channel the anger of injustice into something beautiful and effective, would you want that? Would you engage with it? Would you even invest in it?

I believe we can heal ourselves by embracing ALL the parts of us. They are there for a reason and we can own it rather than be ruled by it. I believe we can move all the parts of us into one amazingly beautiful movement of love towards ourselves and our community.

46 years comes with a lot of life experience. I can weed through bullshit pretty fast. I can also see cycles in humanity now. Not much new under the sun. So when I see the same cycles occurring and humanity engaging in them the same way each time with no real change or growth, I am frustrated! We should be and can be learning.

I've been trained to be a Life Coach. This means I am trained to lead people from "stuck" to "unstuck". We work regularly to move out of one space and into another better space. Growth. Goals. Guidance. I have tried to find a way to bring all the parts of me to the table in this work. My life experience is far more than I ever imagined I would have at 46. I have seen a lot.

But there is this one piece I keep trying to leave out of my work moving forward. It is this part of me that is "too much" "too intense". It is the part of me that is always wanting to fight for the underdog and bring equal hope, love and life to each and every person. It's why I started a teen mentoring program and teen center nearly 10 years ago. It's why I taught people to run who felt like running was not something they could have access to (I'm not a runner, I'm too heavy, I'm too out of shape, I can't be that). It's why I make my voice heard on our podcasts about religious oppression and abuse. I can not escape this part of me. I can not run from it any longer.

I do not want to join the cess pool of opinions on social media platforms. (I haven't decided which vessel is worse: twitter or facebook.) It's futile and is making people crazy. I want to see the fires burning inside you and me actually make a difference. They should move us to more love, more inclusiveness, more kindness....to ourselves and our communities.

So if you resonate with me, are you in? Are you interested in moving these social frustrations, angers, injustices and religious oppressions into something really good? Are you interested in being set free from being an angry person and move into being someone who fights for love? What if being a WHOLE person means learning to funnel all of you into GOOD? Self-denial is a recipe for disaster. You will learn to despise yourself. What if, together, we learned to process the complexities of our world into deeper understanding of ourselves and positive movement for others?

The world doesn't change by yoga alone. You will have to engage all of you and learn to navigate as a WHOLE. No more partial existence and no more denial.

I have decided that I don't fit the normal mode or picture of a Life Coach. I didn't grow and change without diving into who I was and embracing ALL of me. I'm also not very good at making all people happy. I'm not in this to make you happy. I'm in this to help you be authentically you while engaging deep core values and stories that have landed you in this very moment. Some of those are wonderful and good. Some of those need to be released and replaced....because they are not serving the WHOLE you.

If you're still reading and something in you has surfaced...well...maybe I'm not alone after all. The greatest gifts in my journey were coaches, guides and mentors who helped me channel who I was into something I could be at peace with.

But I had to stop telling myself "You're too much". I'm only too much for the wrong person. And I'm finally ok with not being ok for everyone. Let's talk.

The other kind of life coach,

Jess