When I was looking for a coach, I really wanted to know something about them that was personal, so this is for those of you who want to know more about me and my own journey. From the time I was little, I always wanted to be “enough”… and honestly, I never felt like I was. I was adopted, and I have always known that I was. My parents told this beautiful story about how I was special and how they picked me. I always envisioned a nursery full of cribs, and they pointed and said, “We’ll take THAT one.” Nice story, right?
Somehow my kid-brain took that to mean that if I was NOT special, I wouldn’t have been “picked”…. Or that if I didn’t stay special, they would throw me back. So when I tell you that I grew up a perfectionist, know that it started as early as it possibly could have… I wanted to be special enough that my parents would keep me! My parents liked to tell the story of how I missed one question on a spelling test in the first grade, and I thought I would have to repeat the whole grade. I’m pretty sure I cried when I missed the one on the test. So I wasn’t perfect, but I surely tried to be. I really thought I would die without ever feeling like I was enough.
Growing up in my house was hard. We had a typical middle-class loving family on the outside. On the inside, my parents, products of the 50’s, always had Manhattans and Martinis before dinner. I remember family dinners being my own version of hell on earth. I learned to walk on eggshells…to make no demands…and at all costs to be able to read the room correctly, so I wouldn’t poke the bear. It was like growing up in a straightjacket locked in a haunted house where you didn’t know when or where the next monster would spring up. Don’t get me wrong: my parents loved me and provided for me. But I never felt safe being me.
So now, imagine this kid who wants to be perfect and is a big pleaser…. And put her in public schools. Voila! The class nerd/brown-noser! Wow, did I not fit in there either. Never popular, kinda chubby, but smart. Whatever… I got through and I got good grades. Okay, so people would steal my report cards and rip them up. Okay, so I was advised to drop some friends to gain popularity. What did I take away from those years? That it was even LESS okay to be me.
It was my good fortune to get accepted at Yale, and the only other person from my high school who applied to Ivy-league schools accused me of taking his spot. Really?? It was during these years that I started eating my emotions. I couldn’t control my environment, but I could control what I ate, and so I stuffed down my wants and needs under a lot of candy bars. And of course, anytime my parents said anything about my weight, I knew that I wasn’t enough for them and ate more. What a fun circle that was…. NOT.
At least when I got to college, I was with a bunch of smart people…. The “too smart” thing completely fell away. But I had learned the art of being who I was expected to be. I was great one-on-one, but when I got with larger groups of people, I had no idea who to be and felt lost. But I still had my mantra that I was never ENOUGH! The eating accelerated during college years, unchecked by the shame my parents brought about it (except on trips home, when I was always berated for my weight).
Even though I went to a liberal arts college, my parents and I had a huge disagreement about my major. I wanted to major in music. They said if I did that, I had to get a teaching degree, and since Yale didn’t give out teaching degrees, I would have to leave and go to state school. Seriously? So now, it wasn’t enough to work toward a life that I loved. I was learning that obligation and practicality trumped desire and talent. My Depression-era parents believed financial success=happiness. I bought in.
Out of college in the big bad world, I set about making a life that my parents would approve of. And I did really well for a long time. I advanced in my career quickly, doubling my first income in a few years, and doubling it twice more before I was 40. I was made a manager in my 30’s, one of the youngest ever managers in my company. I had a job my parents didn’t entirely understand, but they were proud of my success. I’m sure that they thought I was happy. I learned a lot, I earned a lot, I contributed a lot. But happy? Not really. I kept being called to leadership roles, which were intensely uncomfortable for me because I had learned visibility was not a good thing. But I was compelled to excel.
In my 20’s, I met a man and fell in love. By my 30’s I was married and seemingly on the way to a family of my own. So on my third anniversary, my husband informed me that he could no longer rule out gender reassignment surgery. Yep. Take a minute to take that in. It didn’t take me very long to realize that was a deal-breaker for me, but for reasons you might not expect. It’s true I did not want a female life partner, but I also had no interest in stopping him from becoming the person that he was on the inside. So we separated. I learned a lot about the transgender community through my experiences. There is a documented phenomenon for transgender folks who did not go through adolescence in the gender they identify with: when they finally “come out” they sometimes regress to an adolescent state. So now my husband was not only telling me that he was a woman, he was acting like a giggling teenage girl. Because my husband, for all intents and purposes, disappeared, I processed this event in my life like a death, grieving the loss of my love.
It took a few years to get to the divorce part. It was contentious. I will tell you that I tried my best to set him up for a financially feasible life at a cost to myself. This was a journey that he needed to take to be whole. It never occurred to me to try to stop him or talk him out of it… This is maybe the first time I understood how truly important it was to me to allow the people in my life to be who they TRULY were. I let go. Painfully, but I let go. As a side note, by the time we divorced, she was done with the adolescence thing, and the personality I had known returned. So now three years in, I had to reprocess my loss all over again as a divorce. That took another three years; therapy was incredibly helpful at this point.
My therapist told me with some mirth that I “… have a high tolerance for discomfort.” Hopefully, that will give you a chuckle too, having read all the above. She was very helpful in the healing process, and, in fact, was the first person to tell me about life coaching! I listened with rapt attention because not only did it sound helpful, but I was thinking it sounded like something I would LOVE doing. This was in 1999. About the time the divorce was heating up, I got laid off. Because that’s the way life works sometimes. Things come in waves. So, I was poised for reinvention! A company approached me and asked me if I would come and work for them. So I did. And I got busy. Really busy. 60 hours a week busy. For 12 years.
Within 3 years I became one of the highest-ranking executives at that company. I learned to be an effective leader… a sought-after project manager. I was given new clients frequently, because I was good at creating process where none existed. My first 3 years there, I was soundly reprimanded for helping other people too much. I really thought about that, and I just felt compelled to do it, so I buckled down and made sure I got my core job done but still took the time to help people. Because it felt like if I couldn’t bring that nurturing side of myself to work, I was going to die inside. The people I helped really got noticed. And at about that 3-year mark, they really noticed that those I was helping got further faster and got better results. They started giving me poor performers to work with and I turned them around. At about year 9, they asked me to create a company-wide training program to institutionalize what I was teaching. I loved it! I loved making a difference for the people I worked with in the company, and for the ripple effect it had on the experiences that our clients had interacting with them! I loved watching them grow in their own confidence and start to really own their leadership. I think at some level I knew that I enjoyed that more than I enjoyed the main part of my job. But I didn’t do anything about it, because I was too busy being successful.
During my time in this position, I learned that my ability to read a room came in very handy in the world of business. I could not only read a room but I could influence the outcome with ease, having years of experience in my challenging childhood. Who knew that from such childhood pain a great gift would be born? I’ve got freaky-good intuition. I can help people get in tune with themselves and learn to feel good about themselves. My ability to read people helps me get them to see new ways of looking at things without a great deal of effort.
So, life was clicking along, then I lost the two most influential women in my life in quick succession. My Aunt Katie was a big influence in my life and maybe the only family member that actually knew me for who I was as an adult. I loved her dearly, and I will forever miss her support. Two years later I lost my mother. I know now that those two deaths had a profound effect on me… life was suddenly feeling short. The following June, after my company was sold to a larger company, I was laid off from my job of 12 years. Another wave of losses. While I had seen the layoff coming, the loss was pretty devastating. They treated me well… good severance and all. I had worked my whole life, constantly advancing, never stopping to take a break, so I took one. After some time went by, I started looking for work. Interestingly, every time I looked for work in my current field, I felt dread in the pit of my stomach. So I’d stop looking. Then I’d start again. More dread.
The universe was tapping me on the shoulder—and not too gently, either: “Um… Amy? It’s time.”
Feeling lost, I decided to hire a coach, one of the most pivotal and happiest decisions of my life (thanks, Chris!) As we coached, Chris helped me understand what was truly important to me and to start to distinguish voices that were authentically mine from external influences, like family. Once I got clear on that, I could start to look into alternatives… and man, was I ever scared! I was hemming and hawing about signing up for coaching classes with the Coaches Training Institute. There were a bunch of options, and I was just dragging my heels. So my coach challenged me to sign up for just one class to see if I would like it. I groaned. He asked me what was holding me back from taking the one class. And I practically shouted, “Because I know I’m going to love it and then I will have to take them all!” Man, did we both bust up laughing. Change is hard. Change is scary. Becoming who you are meant to be…. Priceless.
It’s been quite a journey so far…. but I truly feel like I used to live in black and white, and now I’m living in full color. I have finally experienced the feeling that I am enough just as I am. I can have imperfections and be a work in progress and still be loveable. I can reach for the stars because I can have a life of great meaning to me. I have the incredible privilege of helping people become who they truly are and move into lives that they love. Was the change easy? No. Was it worth it? Absolutely. And so now I want everyone to know…. Special is not what you do. Special is who you are. Embrace your gifts and share them. The world needs your unique blend of talents.
In coaching class, we worked on our “life purpose statement”…. Mine underwent many, many drafts, and I can’t tell you what my first draft was, but I can tell you where it is now:
I am the safe harbor where captains rally their inner troops to pioneer unknown territory and chart their own course to greatness.
So, that’s me. It took me 52 years to find my true path. How long do you want to wait to find yours?