Just Be There

Late 1990's

"I don't think I can do this any longer."

When you're coaching someone and they say this to you, most often they're talking about their job. And sometimes you know it's about something bigger and darker.

And even though you never want to hear that as a coach, I just did.

We talked for a while, we let the silence be ok. We talked about support, and she said she would access it. We checked in the next day, and she had.

Some time passed and she navigated her difficult pathway back to a little more light. We had a few more coaching sessions and when the last one ended, I wondered, and hoped.

About a year later I received a letter. In it was a picture of my coachee standing beside her canoe in the wilderness in the middle of her solo back country canoe trip. Not many words.

She was happy... me too.