Boo! It’s You!

It is of the utmost importance that I send a newsletter on Halloween.

On Halloween 2024 I reflected on the stories of self and how untidy before/after transformation stories actually are; on Halloween 2023 I reflected on my (strangely) slow embrace of my woo side and invited ALL of us to consider if our resistance might be a place of deep growth.

So clearly I need to uphold this tradition and write to you today!

I love and have always loved this time of year! Halloween was a joyous time in Wydown Forest, the neighborhood I grew up in in a suburb of St. Louis, MO. The whole neighborhood got very into it with intricate decorations, jack-o-lanterns, and hundreds of kids descending on the streets on Halloween night.

I was (and remain) easily spooked. (I’m looking at you, neighbor, with the ghoulish creature "decoration" hanging from your tall tree!) Yet Halloween also included so many of my favorite things: candy, delightfully crunchy leaves to step on, a crisp autumn evening, carved gourds, community, and all of us kids reveling in the excitement of dressing up, of being someone else for the evening.

Even as an adult it’s kind of an alluring idea, isn’t it? Getting to be a new self invites a feeling of untethered possibility! If we were someone new, would our baggage and insecurities get a night off? Would our fears and doubts and saboteurs step back? Would we be more brave?

The seduction of being somebody else makes me feel incredibly grateful to be a coach who aims to support the opposite yearning: to be more ourselves, not less. This is what is at the heart of coaching: more love for and celebration of who we are and are becoming. And even – imagine this – a softening to our monstrous parts.

People who come to coaching want their desires and dreams to expand and take up space. They want to quiet the voices of doubters, external and internal, and turn up the volume on their confident, curious, and self-trusting parts. Humans who choose coaching are eager to discover what they stand for. In coaching we move towards alignment, desire, passion, and creative self-expression! Coaching clients pursue a love of self that doesn’t require them to be perfect.

In coaching we welcome our monsters and our magic, believing that creating the life we want requires us to grow our awareness as well as our capacity to hold the complexity of who we are.

I am so glad I work in a space where people get to take their disguises off and behold themselves!

This space of discovery and deepening self-awareness can be surprising, embarrassing, enlivening, scary, exhilarating, and a lot more (sometimes all at once and usually over time). I’m a coach who stands firmly in my belief that the individuals I work with are not broken and don’t need to be fixed. Yes, transformation happens in coaching but not from a place of self-punishment. Rather, we change to abandon ourselves less (or not at all). We grow and move towards our desire to be more grounded and self-assured in who we are.

Since the beginning of Growing Home Coaching, I have invited people to bring ALL of themselves into the work and to approach what emerges in coaching with curiosity instead of judgement. I welcome humans who are willing to show up messy and see what happens! Having rough edges and being an imperfect, in process human is to be expected.

What a radical thing it is to get to be our full, messy selves with another human being. How amazing to get to show our vulnerabilities, our doubts, and our longings AND to be accepted and championed through it all. I am lucky to be a practitioner of this special way of being with people and supporting their flourishing. 

Happy Halloween, dear humans. In this transformative time, when the veil is thin, the moon is bright in the sky, and magic crackles, may we all find spaces where we feel safe to be seen in all our complexity and brave enough to delight in our distinctiveness.  

PS: A quote for these times that I saw in a now-lost-to-me newsletter that moved me and feels somehow, somewhat on topic here. 

"A.J Muste stood outside the white house with a lit candle many nights during the Vietnam War and, when a reporter asked him, “Do you really think you are going to change the policies of this country by standing out here alone at night in front of the White House with a candle?” he replied: “Oh I don’t do this to change the country. I do this so the country won’t change me.”"