Musings from a riverside walk

I have my lovely friend Ali to thank for coming up with the idea of a blog for my website!

Ali and I don’t get to meet up that often despite living only a few miles apart. Our busy lives mean that we must purposefully schedule in time to get together. We have known each other for many years both through Scouting and through our respective work in the NHS - she as a nurse and me as a non-clinical manager - and we have both recently taken the decision to step away from the NHS.

It was a bright, glorious, sunny - but nippy - autumn day in late October, and we had not seen each other for a good few months. We were long overdue a get together and we had planned a short walk along the river. The river had recently flooded, and our short 3 mile walk turned into a much longer, much squelchier one with plenty of detours giving us a precious glorious couple of hours to really reconnect, chat and properly catch up with each other.

Ali asked me what I am doing and how my training is going. I told her a bit about some consulting work I had been doing and then I went on to tell her about the life coaching training that I am doing. Well, in actual fact I am somehow (thank you Source) doing 3 different courses, the Elite Life Coaching course with Evolve which has seen me backwards and forwards to London for a weekend every month; the Embodiment Coaching Academy course with the delicious Susie Heath which is 2 days monthly either on line or in person in Monmouth; and later in 2024, the One of Many Certified Coaching course which will find me once again in Stratford-upon-Avon. Ali was fascinated by this and wanted to know more; she asked me to explain some of the concepts to her. As I explained, as best I could, the different elements and how I see them all sitting together and how they can help people and, more importantly, how I plan to use what I am learning to help others, she listened…really listened...intently and with interest. She didn’t tell me that I was daft or that I couldn’t do it or that I wouldn’t be any good at it. She enthused with me and could see what it meant to me and the power of what I was planning to do even if I didn’t, at that time, know exactly how it would come together.

You see, I have been on a personal journey over the past couple of years and Ali - and a few other fabulous special women in my life - have been there on the sidelines cheering and supporting me all the way, providing hugs when needed, plying me with alcohol and hot chocolate in equal measure and dealing with the multitude of snot fests and tsunamis of tears and emotions. They have shared my lows and my highs. Without each and every one of them I would not have survived as well as I did and journeyed to become who I am today. They are my tribe and I love each of them dearly.

In truth I was not aware that I needed to go on this journey: I was merrily in my own little world working away as a GP practice manager, looking after my family and dealing with a few health niggles along the way but I was ok, if only I kept going. And oh boy was I good at keeping going! What I didn’t know was that I was slowly and surely breaking – bit by bit, day by day. My work and the relentlessness of it coupled with the global COVID-19 pandemic was taking its toll. I wasn’t looking after myself properly and I ended up having shoulder surgery. And then mother nature decided it was a really good time to lob in a hefty dose of menopause! I was in denial, very firmly in denial, like an ostrich with its backside in the air and its head firmly in the ground not wanting to look up and see what was becoming fairly obvious to those closest to me at the time.

You see, I had refused to acknowledge what was happening and I certainly wasn’t going to stop, after all if I kept on going it would all be ok! So, in the end Source and Mother Nature stepped in and took over – I really did break! One day it just all got too much, and I found myself unable to function, I was quite literally in a big snotty, teary, hiccupping heap on the floor with my blood pressure sky high and feeling very poorly indeed. Another very dear friend found me and promptly put me in her car and took me home. I had gone through burn out – I was well and truly spent, burnt out without an ounce of anything left in me to keep going.

And home is where I stayed for weeks and weeks, well actually I was off from work for a few months. Feeling the feelings and emotions and wondering just what had happened for me to find myself in such a state. However, this enforced stoppage gave me the gift of time, time that I had never had before, time to stop, and I mean really stop, time to listen to my body and feel all the feelings and emotions that I had simply pushed to one side because I was “too busy” to deal with them. This time was not easy. It was not easy for me. It was not easy for my family, and neither was it easy for my friends or work colleagues because all any of them could do was to sit and watch…watch and wait…wait and pray and hope. None of them had seen me in such a state and all of them scrabbled around trying to work out how to fix me. But, you see, no one could fix me. Only I could do that. And I could only do that when I had enough in my reserve tank to enable me to do it. Fixing me was going to be a long job!

Prior to this I had already started a journey of self-discovery which involved coaching and lots of other things which all felt somewhat alien to be honest, but I was happy to go with it because deep down I knew that there was stuff I needed to shed and bigger stuff that I needed to unearth to find out who I truly was.

Once I had gotten over the initial couple of weeks of tears and sleeping – I did not know that I had that many tears in me or that it is possible for a human to sleep as much as I did – I tentatively took more steps on my journey. Just very gentle baby ones to start with. It felt good to be doing something for me, just me…no one else, just me. No, it wasn’t selfish although “Naggy Nora” my internal critic was determined to inform me that it was. It was actually self-love that I was slowly but surely learning whilst also learning to leave self-loathing behind. My friends and family were stood on the sidelines watching and waiting with bated breath to see how I was going to fare.

This journey was not an easy one, the paths were often steep and stony with bigger obstacles along the way. Some days it felt like I was going in the wrong direction, other days I surged on forwards. Sometimes my journey was smooth and calm and other times it was stormy. There were times that it felt like I was travelling alone and other times I had many travelling companions. There have also been a few occasions where I seemed to be stuck on a roundabout trying to decide which exit to take!

Throughout all of this my constant travel companion has been coaching. I have had different coaches along the way, and I have been coached in many ways; some were successful, and others were less so (or so I thought!). At every turn, stumbling block and dead end there have been lessons, sometimes they were so blindingly obvious and other times they were simply dull fuzzy nuggets of something that would not show itself to me, well not at the time anyway.

My lovely Ali has seen me journey my journey and now sees me with bright shining eyes and a big wide smile, briming with hope and enthusiasm and a quiet understated confidence, preparing to continue with my courses and get out there to share my skills and what I have learned with the world. Some people will openly embrace what I have to offer, others will not be interested at all and yet more still will linger on the side lines curiously watching and waiting to see how things will pan out for me and what nuggets of inspiration I can give them to entice them to come and dip a toe and see what it is all about. And all of that is ok.

I am sure there will be many more muddy - and not so muddy - riverside walks that take place and inspire future issues and through this blog I intend to share some insights into the various elements of coaching, well-being, mindfulness, and all things useful and helpful that you can take with you on your glorious journey called life.

Much love and squelchy walking boots, Michelle x