Starting where I Stand

Friends,

I’m so relieved, so damn EXCITED to be here. Now, at this time. Finally [But all SO scared].

If you’ve know me for a while, you know I’ve flirted [a lot] with coaching before. I’m beyond fascinated with the human mind and our behaviour; innately believing we can do pretty much anything [and do it very well] as long as it is wholly aligned with who we are. I have this big, bold idea that I can leave the world a better place than I came into it, and this starts with people living their lives as closely calibrated to who they naturally are.

However, I haven’t quite been able to find my “home” in this huge, busy space of coaching & personal growth; my place of executing this big, bold idea of mine with confidence, belief and trust in what I was offering up to the world. I needed to essence of what I’m here in the world to do to ring so (f*cking) loud and true that I simply could not, not put it out there.

I needed to step away - allow myself to fall apart a bit if you will - to realise that to find that magical, elusive sense of contentment, a sense of true belonging to myself [“peace of the soul” as we say in Denmark], I needed to address the mess. I had to stop and confront one thing [discontentment], and when I stopped, the tsunami of ALL the shit I’ve been running from came crashing down. Right now we are all having to stop - it can be rather confronting, right?

I’ve wanted to share the story of where I’ve been, the mess I’ve been in, but you can’t speak to a mess when you are in middle of it. And I’ve kept waiting for the time when I’d be fully out on the other side so I could look back at falling apart as this interesting time in my life and say clever things about it. I wanted to get safely to the other side, go back and tell the story from the beginning because only when you know the ending do you really know where to start, right?

Am I out on the other side enough? No, I haven’t emerged triumphant like a good heroine does. I don’t have perfect insights, no perfect words, no certified recovery quite yet. But it may be we can’t speak to a mess when we are in the middle of it, but perhaps we don’t need to get all the way to the other side before we can talk, before we can start something new? Because who knows if such a place even exist? Perhaps we just need to be 51% better, and I’m definitely that (on a good day, perhaps even 84%). So why not start right now.

Another nudge I had come from a previous mentor. A few months ago her newsletter dropped into my inbox. It was titled “Start Where You Stand” and it’s about how we want things to be different, about all the “should” we impose on ourselves, about wanting to start anywhere but where we are. But by figuring out what it means to start right where you are standing, you learn how to show up (for yourself), take action and let go of the results [and what you can’t control]. She’d heard the phrase “Start Where You Stand” from her own previous mentor, and it changed her whole operating system. and now mine too. At the time the “shoulds” dominated the majority of my thinking. I wanted so many things to look, feel and be different. I wanted to start from somewhere else, someplace better and nicer. Plus I should be enlightened enough to know better by now, with all that therapy, right? But the most grey and heavy cloud began to lift when those word sank in “start where you stand”. We literally have no other place to meaningfully move forward from. Keep an eye toward where you want to go, but know that all meaningful change takes place starting right where you stand.

So all of this to say, no I’m not 100% on the other side with the perfect insights and the perfect words but I’m unlikely to ever be. I have no idea where this will take me, but I’m starting where I stand, with what I have; which is huge trust and believe in myself and in the work that I have done.

• I want us all to live life as a true reflection of who we naturally are on the inside. When we live this way we make authentic contributions to the world [whatever those contributions may look like], and this will always be the best starting point to make a better world.

• How do we live as a true reflection of who we naturally are? By knowing ourselves - and I’m here to help with this! to help bring about, in myself and others, greater [self-] awareness, [self-] connection and [self-] compassion.

I don’t have revolutionary, new, original ideas, but I have my own unique, original voice. My own unique, original story and I want to start a different take on coaching and different conversation on sexual trauma.

And I hope that by putting myself out in the world, by sharing my experiences, by sharing how I’m navigating life [with all that it entails of joy, pain & healing of trauma], I give just one other person the nudge to start where they are standing.

I also want to have a new conversation about sexual assault/trauma. One that includes ALL of it, the heavy and difficult, the vastness of shitty-ness and pain; but also the beauty, the lightheartedness, the funny, significant life-affirming moments. And the hope. Because the need for crying and laugher can co-exist, and the room is big enough for anger and pleasure, sadness and joy.

I am no writer but that doesn’t mean I don’t have stories to tell, conversations to starts and seed to sow for change and transformation further down the line. I just really believe in this work. I know in my bones [because I have, and still am doing the work] that creating & expanding our awareness, connection, and ultimately compassion fuels the right kind of change. The changes that give you “peace of the soul” because it is anchored so strongly in who you are.

So stick around - I can’t wait to see where this will lead us.

with love

Anne