Hello, I’m Rebecca. Welcome!

 

The Short-ish Version…

I’m a life coach.
I’m a photographer.
I’m an artist & adventurer.
I sing along, dance alone, and laugh loud.
I fiercely believe in the beautiful, powerful possibility inside us all.
I’m a daughter, sister, partner and friend.
I’m a doggie momma to two amazing pooches and I hope you don’t mind when I talk about them ALL THE TIME.
I like lists. I love lists.
I have always felt like I was more than one thing in any given moment. For better or worse. (these days= better:))
I hang inspiring cards & photos around my home. They make me smile & pause & sink into the wisdom I always know is there, even when I forget.
I’m a total sap; I cry at Amazing Grace, the national anthem, & pretty much every Person of the Week/happy news story I see.
I journal almost every day, and have for years. I credit it with both helping me grow and keeping me sane.
I recently went blonde (as a part of my “year of doing”) & I’m loving it!
I love to travel: plane rides, road trips, and long haul bus rides make me freakishly happy.
I believe everything happens for a reason.
I’d rather get up early and enjoy the quiet morning than stay up late.
I don’t believe there are mistakes, just opportunities to see who we truly are and rise to meet the world with our best.

I have always, always, always wanted to help people.

At five or six years old this manifested in offering up my opinion of cheese to strangers in the dairy isle (true story:)), or diving over and over to the bottom of the pool trying to find a lost earring (I almost always found it:)), and later being in charge of the med kit and giving first aid to my fellow field hockey teammates.

I never understood that I could be of real assistance to people though, until a few years ago. And that awareness actually came from the sheer, utter, and complete dissatisfaction of leading a life that didn’t incorporate some sort of human connection.

My creative passion, photography, got me out of the office environments that stifled my personality. But it is coaching that has allowed me to fully come to see exactly how I can help other women, who just as I did, have lost their confidence, their courage, their passion, and their direction.

I’m not an expert, nor a guru, nor a sage. I am a woman who has lived a life, made U-turns and course corrections, and been introduced to people and ideas that changed everything. Over and over again. I constantly have to remind myself that LIFE IS SHORT, and needn’t be taken quite so seriously! We all want to feel like we’re living our dreams, doing something worthwhile with our time, making a difference that actually matters. These days, even in my own small way, I feel like I am. And that feels pretty amazing.

Wishing you the same,

Rebecca

The Full Monty Version…

I was born… No, no, no that’s too far back. Let’s jump in when things started to go a little off the rails, shall we? After graduating college with an Honors degree in English (cum laude, I might add ) I had big plans of being a writer. I’d written stories long and short since I was a kid, so in following the old adage “stick to what you’re good at” I could think of no other path I was better suited for. I got myself a nice (ahem, unpaid) internship at a magazine in the big city and proceeded to spend every penny of my graduation money on train fare in & out (that travel stipend they promised never seemed to materialize?). It only took a couple of weeks for me to see the writing on the wall and what that writing said to me loud and clear was,

“this is so not your place”.

I was dejected. I felt like I’d let myself and everyone around me down. I was pretty ashamed. So I limped my broke butt back into the temporary placement agency that had seen me through 3 summers and 4 winter breaks, and they got me a schnazzy gig covering a maternity leave at a construction company. Holla! After a month of training I was left alone in the office, sometimes for 8 straight hours, so it’s understandable, to me at least, that the interwebs and I started a pretty serious relationship. I always got my work done, so no one was the wiser when I secretly started putting together an escape plan. I had the burning itch to get out of the country, but I’d never been (besides a very short toe dip in Nogales Mexico which doesn’t really count) so I had a tough choice to make. I knew I wanted to go someplace beautiful, someplace relatively safe, and someplace far, far away.

Maybe it was the promise of meeting my own Legolas, but it didn’t take me that long to decide on the Land of the Long White Cloud, aka, New Zealand.

My parents were freaked, my friends were stoked, and I was scared pee-less, but I did it. I spent six months in New Zealand, backpacking around all by my onesies. I went horseback riding, sky diving, I tramped, I WWOOFed, I worked at a hostel at the tip of a lake surrounded by mountains and glaciers and I dealt with mad-crazy homesickness. It was amazing. And then I came home. I wish like hell I could tell you that upon arrival back to the mother country I took all that good mojo, all those ideas I had while living wild and free, and turned them into the kind of life I could be proud of. But I can’t.

Instead what followed were years, LITERALLY YEARS, of me trying on jobs, cities, and industries in an attempt to feel good about my life, and myself. NYC, Boston, big firms, small ones, you name it I tried it. I wanted to feel passionate, and purposeful, and driven… But no matter how many circles I went in (one of which actually involved a 5 week solo road trip across the country and back home again!) I was never happy. What was I…?

I was depressed, I was anxious, I was miserable. What the hell was wrong with me?

In an utterly degrading backwards move, I finally ended up back at the exact same construction firm I had worked at oh so long ago, only this time for a permanent position. It was then that I finally broke down. I just couldn’t do it any longer. I got myself a sweet therapist and began to put myself back together again. How the heck can you ever find happiness when you have no idea who you are…and of what you do know, you don’t like much? With the help, love and support of those around me I got better. The job still sucked, but I had a sense at least of who I was again, and what I was passionate about. I started taking my photography more seriously, put out my own shingle, and ditched the crap job. Four years later I’m still shooting.

So, how did this whole life coaching thing happen? Well, while being online to promote my photo biz I stumbled upon a bunch of life coaches. I was leery at first, but their stuff was good, and with a healthy mind I was picking up what they were putting down, if you know what I mean? I slowly started to see that photography, and trusting myself enough to start a business with it, was the first step in developing some real self-confidence. And with that as my foundation, I began to hear other ideas, other dreams, that had long ago been been silenced by fear and doubt. I wanted to connect with people, I wanted to hold space for them, and be a source of positivity if I could.  With a greater appreciation of who I was, what was important to me, and the way I wanted to be in the world I decided to take the leap and get trained by the one and only Martha Beck. And here I am today.

I tell you this long and winding tale because I think we see a lot of “happy endings” online today, and that’s great. But it can be really helpful to know that we all don’t start there. In fact, I’d wager that if we did “start there” we’d be a hell of lot less interesting.

I understand where the women I work with are coming from, because that deep, pit of your stomach ache for a life you love is one that I know all too well.

Heck, I flew 29,000 miles and drove across more than a dozen states trying to satisfy it! I learned a few things along my path, things that I’m hoping can be of use to someone else who might be as confused as I was, and wants more. Because when you figure it out, well, that’s a beautiful thing.

R

 

Photos of me courtesy of the incredible Ashley Keleman and Darlene Kreutzer.