Leading Parallel Lives: Are A Mother & Daughter Really Walking on Different Paths?

LEAVE A COMMENT 2014 December 3

 

FOF Diane Danvers Simmons helps women embrace new chapters in their lives by using three guiding principles: Own your Power, Feel your Spirit, & Live your Life the way you choose, with Wit and Wisdom. She wrote this essay four years ago, upon realizing that she and her 17-year-old daughter weren’t traveling on paths quite so different as we generally think.

She’s in the last stage of puberty; I’m menopausal.
She’s experiencing the throes of first love;
I’ve been thrown by love. She’s finding herself; I’m rediscovering myself. Two perspectives, one special relationship, and, to top it all, she’s stealing my
clothes, shoes, and jewelry.

The differences and similarities are uncanny, and more than enough to test any good woman on either end of the spectrum. While she’s bent over in pain, hugging a hot water bottle and sobbing over her cracked baby eggcup, I’m pulling off my clothes, stepping into a cold shower and weeping over the heel she just broke on my new red stilettos.

Tissues, self-help books, exercise, journals, chick flicks, wine and chocolate are all imperative at this time for both of us, and that’s just the starter kit. Round two: meditation and yoga, both of us lying on our backs with our legs in the air, to get the blood back into our brains, calm the nerves, and give us a whole new perspective on any situation. A cup of tea helps to seal the euphoric moment.

Both of us are coping with a set of new dynamics as women. I’ve had to own up to my choices, respect that she’s becoming a young woman, and she’s now more than just my daughter. She’s learning to respect me as a woman with feelings, desires and dreams, too. Both of us are stepping into uncharted territory, even if my stilettos are more worn out than hers!

She looks to the stars and thinks, “The world is my oyster.” Meanwhile, I’m thinking, ‘Enough of the oyster, now where’s the damn pearl?’ The truth is, I have a treasure chest of pearls, glistening with wisdom, many of which I will pass on to her. But the true beauty of living life now lies in the fact that there are so many more pearls waiting for both of us to discover!

(more…)

Meet Coach Shirley Oya

LEAVE A COMMENT 2014 March 14

Shirley Oya, CPCC, BCC

Please fill us in on your background.

I was an accountant for many years, first working in a public accounting firm, and then operating a home business while raising two daughters. I specialized in working with television writers/producers and holistic health practitioners. While I enjoyed working with numbers, the best part was the interaction with my clients.

How do you come to coaching?

In 2004, when my youngest started kindergarten I began to reflect on what career would fulfill me going forward. I worked with a Life Coach and soon discovered that coaching was at the core of everything I’d done. So I opened my private practice and first coached clients on their personal finances. After taking a course at The Coaches Training Institute, I was instantly hooked! I pursued my coach training with CTI, including the advanced certification, CPCC. I soon discovered my real passion was working with women around career and life transitions, and I’ve never looked back!

Do you have any life experiences that inform your coaching?

Parenting and experiencing my own life and career transitions give me a perspective that help me understand each client’s experiences.

I also faced many challenges in my childhood, including alcoholic parents, who fought continuously, and left my severely disabled sister under my care for extended periods while they went out drinking. As a result I grew up with a lot of anxiety and depression, but thankfully, I got to work with a gifted therapist (specializing in psychoanalysis) who helped me heal. While coaching is a very different modality (though many of the benefits overlap), my own personal work in therapy deeply informs my work, especially for clients who also struggle with anxiety. I am a student of neuroscience and positive psychology (self taught), and that informs my work as well.

I like clients who understand and accept that change begins with them (it truly does), and that playing the victim or blaming others are NOT the answers!

What is your mission?

I want to educate and guide women towards lives that they can control; to coach them to ‘own’ and use their natural gifts, values, and passions to do the work that is enormously fulfilling and uplifting to them.

What kind of clients with whom do you most enjoy working?

Women, in particular, highly successful executives in their 30’s, 40’s and 50’s who are disenchanted with life the way it is, and are seriously motivated to make changes. Most important, I like clients who understand and accept that change begins with them (it truly does), and that playing the victim or blaming others are NOT the answers!

Do you hold workshops?

I am super excited about my signature talk, which I’m now doing throughout the Los Angeles area. It’s called “3 Massive Mistakes Female Executives Make That Keep Them Overworked, Overwhelmed, and Struggling to Find Time for Their Kids.” It’s an educational talk that provides a ton of value, tips, and tools that women can apply right away to ease their stress trying to balance it all.

Attendees will learn:

  • About their surprising, self-sabotaging habit that keeps them highly stressed.
  • How a simple five-step process will help them live easier lives, right now.
  • The #1 secret to living a fabulously fulfilling, and brilliantly balanced life!

I’d like to share some testimonials from the talks:

A rich, insightful time of sharing and information. Shirley is precise in setting the stage for people to discover, delve, and deepen their self-awareness.

—Jennifer Oliver O’Connell

Everything changed for me in like three days after the speech. I’m STILL Amazed.

—S. King

This was such an insightful presentation. I learned something that I was able to apply the very next day with a client

—Vicki Schmidt, R.N., M.F.T.

To register at a location near you, contact me: Shirley@shirleyoya.com

Where and how often do you coach?

I coach via Skype (audio), or telephone, so I can coach clients anywhere in the world.

My sessions are 45-minutes, three times a month, with a minimum three-month engagement. I first do a free 30-minute consultation so a potential client and I can determine if we are a good fit.

What’s the most important thing to know about you?

I am fiercely devoted to every client’s change and growth, and I won’t give up on you, as long as you don’t give up on you!

Meet Coach Rosanne Leslie

LEAVE A COMMENT 2013 September 30

Rosanne Leslie

Age: 52

Are you married?

I’ve been divorced for 12 years. I was married for 13 years and have three children. My marriage taught me what love is and, most importantly, what love is not. Raising my three children alone showed me how our society views single women and mothers and gave me the freedom to stand autonomously outside of that paradigm. Recognizing the dysfunctional dynamics of my marriage I was able to (slowly) extricate myself from it.

What did your parents do?

My father was an engineer for an international company and my mother was a stay-at-home mom.

Why did you become a coach?

I became a life-coach as a result of coaching myself through several years of single parenting. I discovered some of the perennial answers to questions I believe we all have when faced with life challenges and changes. Who Am I? What is love? Why am I here? What is my purpose? How can I be happy?

Happiness is found at our core and so long as we have hope and dreams we can find joy in any day.

What kind of Fab over Fifty women can most benefit from your coaching?

Any woman can benefit from coaching if she is ready to make a change and is earnest. However, the woman who will most benefit from my style of coaching is one who would like to redefine herself and still believes that she has dreams left in her and that she possesses the power to make them come true. I work a great deal with women who have teen-aged children and parenting challenges. One of my greatest strengths is guiding women through the process of divorce, especially those involving domestic violence issues. These women have special needs and because I lived this kind of marriage, I understand them. My empathy and compassion runs very deep for them.

What is your mission?

My mission is manifold. We all suffer and complain too much. There is a certain camaraderie and “acceptance” in the conversations between women in their complaining and suffering and I would like to show them that they can be happy now, in this very moment. Happiness is not contingent upon anyone’s external world or life circumstances. Happiness is found at our core and so long as we have hope and dreams we can find joy in any day. My mission is to guide individuals to autonomy in a society that does not readily embrace that. My greatest mission is to show women how to love and be loved and to celebrate their femininity as a gift and not a weapon against men or themselves.

Tell us about your typical client.

I don’t have a typical client. Everyone is different and comes to me when they are either excited about changing their lives and careers or they are devastated and traumatized and don’t know where or how to begin their day.

What is the greatest piece of advice you can give women?

To recognize that they are alive and what alive really means. The pulse of our society and the world is extremely fast and prevents many from understanding and feeling that they are “here” and that being “here” is precious and a gift.

What woman do you admire most?

I don’t have a particular woman I admire. Perhaps it is she, the silent and nameless one, unrecognizable in the crowd and the world, that I admire most. She is not famous or rich by society’s standard, but she knows how to give and love selflessly. She silently struggles every day to get by and has boundless compassion, integrity and humility. I think she is in every woman. She is my hero and I look for her, every day.

What is your favorite quote?

“Imagination is more important than knowledge.”–Albert Einstein.