Dear Everyone:
Remember how they taught you. How much of it was fear. Refuse to hand it down. The legacy stops here…
Melissa Etheridge
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I spent the better part of the first day of 2021 in intensive coaching with a young client. (I should mention that I’ve reached an age where “young” is relative – this person is well into a highly successful professional career, family and all the responsibility that comes with the lives we so often seek).
This brilliant physician was, quite simply, feeling undone. Undone by the weight of it all, undone by the unrelenting pain and trauma and loss of working in healthcare over the last year, undone by the loneliness and fear that is born of believing they were the only one to feel the weight of it all in this way. That somehow it was an indictment of their strength and resilience.
This is a lie.
Our commitment to this bootstraps-grit-rugged-individualism legacy is every bit as false and damaging as the prince charming fairytales of our youth. It breeds fear and intensifies loneliness.
The Legacy stops here.
Every interesting person I’ve known in my lifetime – personally or professionally – has looked up at some point and said, “is this really IT? Is this all there is?”
I’ve done it.
My husband has done it.
All my dearest friends and closest, most committed colleagues have been there at some point.
Every client I’ve ever worked with has experienced it.
Is this all there is?
The answer is the ever so deeply unsatisfying, “well, that depends…”
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It depends on what we choose from here.
It all comes down to choice. Do I shut down or get curious? Do I stay or go? Do I lean in or walk away? Do I come at you reflexively, from a place of fear and pain, or do I drop my fists and get curious about how you are making sense of the world?
Am I willing to learn something that disrupts the way I’ve always moved and thought?
Am I willing to try something new and scary?
We choose.
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The last year shattered a lot of already deeply cracked and damaged systems. Healthcare and education took a particular beating, and regardless of the courage our doctors, nurses and educators have shown, the emotional and psychological toll has been extreme. The daily anger, disdain, distrust and vitriol against them has increased the harm exponentially. And while practitioners are still fully in the game - doing their very best and clinging to the hope that there is a light on the horizon - they are almost universally exhausted and hurting.
For many years now I’ve been engaged in trauma-responsive and trauma-mitigation coaching. It’s a paradigm I’ve used successfully to help hundreds of professional clients - from the frontline to the C-Suite - move from places of pain, uncertainty and profound burnout into their “what’s next.”
Occasionally that meant radical change, but much more often it meant recognition, regulation, internal reset, and choice. Lodestar is both the name and the aspiration of my business: to provide light and direction when you’re feeling most lost.
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In addition to coaching, we also train professional and physician coaches in this paradigm. Lodestar offers the only ICF accredited Trauma-Mitigation Master Class in the U.S., offering generous Core and Resource credits AND Category 1 CME for physician coaches. Our courses are small, highly experiential and designed to help professional coaches expand their scope of practice and prepare for the strong emotions and trauma that will be showing up in clients, in all professions, in the months and years to come.
We have one remaining course offering in 2021, with only a few remaining seats available. If you're interested, please sign up or reach out to learn more, today. The skills are more needed now than they've ever been.
It is ok to wonder “what’s next?” It is ok to question, “is this all there is?” It is ok to reach out and share your fear and pain. There’s a way out. There’s a way THROUGH. And you aren’t alone.
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Stay brave and kind.
Connect with someone you trust.
Laugh and actively seek joy.
Hydrate
More soon.