All the 2020 things...they were not all bad
What a year. What a year. I like so many others looked to the year 2020 as the focus year. My focus was going to be on my coaching business that got delayed due to my new caregiver duties for my dad with Alzheimer’s. I ended 2019 with a plan to grow my business as I took my turn staying with my dad. Who knew when I left him in early March that I would not be back for 7 months?
When COVID-19 hit, I had to figure out how to pivot my business although it is primarily virtual, with lost jobs, coaching is looked at as a luxury, not a necessity. Of course, I can give you numerous reasons why you should hire a coach but I will save that for another blog post J
My goals for 2020 were simple or so I thought. Take on no more than 10 clients, create a podcast, create online classes about health. 2020 was my year to go deep not wide. To make sure I have work/life balance to tend to the personal things in my life. When 2020 came to a screeching halt, it seems my goals became stagnant.
Going into 2020, my coaching niche was women over 40 with weight loss issues, chronic pain issues, women looking to creating their next chapter and as I type this, it seems like a lot. In April, I took on a client who when we started, we were getting her ready for her daughter’s wedding in a year. As I started working with her, it was very apparent she was in the beginning stages of menopause (perimenopause). This is a subject I was intimately familiar with and it was like the clouds parted and I found my calling. I declared that I am a pro-aging life and wellness coach. I help women navigate the next chapter of their lives. This felt right. It married the life and wellness aspect of my coaching with a sprinkle of career coaching (which is where I originally started out as a coach) and set me on a path of reinventing my coaching practice.
I started moving forward with creating programs with women in the second half of their lives in mind. And then….May 25th, the world witnessed the killing of George Floyd. As the world looked on in horror, to me, as a 60-year-old African American woman, this was unfortunately not an uncommon occurrence but this time, the world was at home, glued to their devices and it was hard to not see or ignore. Something broke in me. The recognition of this type of brutality which was so many people it seemed to be brand new to so many people some of my closest friends, it saddened me, angered me, and created a hardness I had not experienced in quite a while. As conversations around race, brutality, and allying became common, it became so utterly exhausting. As someone who lives in the skin I am in and who knows what happened to George Floyd was not anything new, the conversations about how horrible this was, or how can I help to be a better ally became so tiring. Although I had many friends who were sincerely willing to learn about what it means to be an ally and put in the work, there were others that disappointed me with the “what a shame” attitude. It was bad enough to be going through a pandemic and the aloneness that it brings with it but to also realize “friends” were new cycle friends broke my heart. But I chose to protect my peace and had to let them go. One good thing that came out of all of it was in the midst of this chaos, I invited my sister, daughters, nieces, and cousin to join me on Tuesday nights to originally talking about how we can help our community which had a higher percentage of COVID-19 than others but it turned into so much more, we were all exhausted, sad, and mad. We now had an outlet to discuss how we’re feeling and help each other through. We were salvaging our mental health and we still meet every Tuesday night.
It is interesting how when you say you will never do something, that thing presents itself. So, I decided when I left corporate America, I was done with career coaching. I also just knew coaching on money was not my thing, and I would never coach a teenager. Well, all three came strolling into 2020 for me. I learned so much from these three “I will never do’s” that shaped me into a better coach in 2020. I still will not seek out teens to coach and I will incorporate money talk in my coaching because that is part of life and the lack of or the worrying about it affects your health. I am grateful for these lessons though and I can say it has made me a stronger coach and stretched me in ways I did not know possible.
2020 also had me revisiting old skill sets, for many years, I was a technical trainer. I loved training so it was not hard to pivot to creating online courses for my business or so I thought. I knew I had the training part down, and the course writing down, but there are so many more moving parts than I was not use to in terms of putting the dang then together in 2020. So, I sought help. I enrolled in a class to help me pull it all together. And although the plan was always to roll the class out in 2021, the prep time and right training were key. My course “Menopause 101: What your mother did not tell you”” rolls out in the first quarter of 2021 and I am excited. The class demystifies menopause for women. The class curate’s information to help women in this stage of their lives understand what the heck is going on with their bodies and all the things in between.
2020 has also brought some personal joys. 2020 has brought my son’s podcast which is part of Living Faith Bible Institutes series on dispensationalism. If it sounds heavy, it is. Take a listen. He also became a minister and as he puts it “I can marry and bury”.
My baby girl, my artist, reinvented the meaning of pivot. 2020 brought canceled or rescheduled shows so she used her talents to pivot and make masks (with a percentage of the proceeds being donated) at the beginning of the pandemic. Although some of the in-person shows were canceled her work did show and sell at a few galleries and museums. Check out her work here and here 2020 also had her creating another creative arm to her business by way of body butter. What started as gifts to family and friends at Christmas became a COVID-19 business, Madelyn Makes .
I skipped over my middle for good reason….she got engaged and is giving us all the reasons to be happy bringing in the new year. In a couple of days, my last little chick will be married. What a way to start the new year!
2020 has also brought some personal sadness. There were deaths. Some COVID-19 retaliated some not and the year ended with my 91yr. old father becoming seriously ill and now needs 24-hour care. I guess I started my year by taking care of my dad and ended it with searching for someone to care for him full time coming full circle.
I have learned so much about myself in 2020. I have witnessed so many facets of who I am and what I am capable of. I have been lazy, moody, angry, disappointed, sad, happy, and resilient just like the rest of you. I have left 2020 better than I started it and would not trade the lessons I learned for anything. I am so much better for having gone through some of the things 2020 brought. I will walk into 2021 with gratitude.