This is Hard.
Today, I am just sad. My daughter left after staying with me for 3 weeks. We did not have a single fight which is epic news (one minor scuffle in the Verizon store but technology challenges don’t count, right?). She loves to cook, and I love to eat, so we are a perfect pair. I even watched some throw away shows on Netflix that I eventually got sucked into. This time it was Single Wives. I did see some educational value in the show because it was about 4 single women looking to find love led by a relationship coach, and I thought I could learn something since I am a coach myself.
Honestly, though, I just plain miss her.
Saying goodbye without really knowing when you will see your kids again hurts. Empty nesting brings up all sorts of feelings, and if you add a global pandemic on top of empty nesting, it feels 100x worse.
Given that I am a coach and supposed to know how to pull myself out of this funk, what to do?
First and foremost, I am honest about how I am feeling, and I am choosing to stay sad. In the past, I would have worked until I didn’t feel anything. And, in fairness, this strategy worked for me for a very long time. The downstream effect of this behavior though was that I was very disconnected from myself and this caused me to think and act in ways that were not truly beneficial to my overall well-being.
Despite what you may think, coaching isn’t always about making yourself feel better.
I think there is a very common misperception that this is what coaches do. Many times, I am working with my clients on simply acknowledging how they are feeling – raising their level of awareness. You would be surprised how often we skim over this part. Sometimes we are so busy taking care of others and our lives in general, the last person we focus on is ourselves. So today, I acknowledged how I was feeling and did not rush through it. I also surrounded myself with some amazingly uplifting friends (Life is Messy). And now, I am writing about this topic. I am taking action and not letting my feelings debilitate me. I believe this is a much more accurate depiction of how coaching works.
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