Just yesterday, I have finished my 3 month session with my coach, Jenny Ferry.
I met her at Blissdom Canada. She sat next to me at one of the sessions (I think), we started talking and hit it off, and she offered to be my coach. At the time, I had no idea what to expect. But ever since we came back from Blissdom, (she lives in Phoenix, AZ and I live in Victoria, BC) we kept in touch over email and had almost once-a-week sessions over Skype.

Yesterday was our exit session. As I sat down to talk, with a cup of tea as usual, she asked me various questions. Did the session meet my expectations? What did I think I took away from the coaching…?

She reminded me what I initially wanted out of the coaching. And she asked me if I got what I wanted.
My answer was no, because what I was asking for was not something she could just “give” to me through coaching.
What I got out of it was the awareness, that what I wanted was not something I cannot just “get”. And I am happy with the awareness/realization. I think it’s huge.

And there are other things I got out of the coaching. I told her the biggest thing I got out of it was again, the awareness – awareness when I feel that reaction “I don’t want to see/think/talk about it” It is a very good sign that I should dig deep and shed a light in there.
I have often ignored those bad feelings/things, but I have learned not to do that. That is a very valuable lesson in my opinion.

Also, by talking to her every week, I was trained to stop and think and ask myself a question. When I feel sad/mad/overwhelmed/stressed or even when I am extremely happy, now I kind of have a habit to stop and think WHY I am feeling that way. This helped learning more about myself and help myself grow.

While I was talking to her over Skype, my friend Heather Greenwood Davis’s recent blog post about her experience at Dove (She was one of the 14 women who did the video for Dove with me)came to mind. She wrote a great post about importance of flexibility.
Jenny was saying although what I got out of the coaching was quite different from what I hoped to get out of at the beginning – as if we had a map of where we wanted to go – we guided through different paths using the map and we actually found something else.
Isn’t that brilliant?
When she said this, it totally reminded me of Heather’s post.

As I write this, my heart is filled with gratitude for Jenny. Literally, I had more than one meltdown in front of the Skype screen and bawled my eyes out few times. Those were the moments I just needed somebody there to listen. And she did that for me.

My journey is not over yet and I am sure I will need more help in the future, but I am confident now that I have the map and the flashlight to shed the light on those scary places.

Thank you, Jenny.