Getting Coached on My First Day Here

So.

We wrote the book. I went back to Califonia.

The thing about a book, at least when you self-publish, is that in some ways it’s like a seed. You plant this new thing into the world, but if you don’t water it and make sure it gets enough light you can hear it calling to you like an actress in the wings.

Anne. Anne. Anne.

I want some attention. Go to bookstores. Go to libraries. Tell them about me. Get me some more light.

I mean, why did you create me if you aren’t tooting my horn?

We, Kathy, Laura, and I, the co-authors of Kathy’s memoir/(lecture on how to live your life if you want to be a good person and win in the process and also make people laugh) Grit and Wit, Empowering Lives and Leaders, had put the book out into the world and many people read it, especially the Westwood High School and Harvard alum whom Kathy had coached for a total of 51 years.

The thing is, we all moved on with our lives, and I was in California feeling a little badly about this. I’d meant to go to my beloved Trident Bookshop in Boston and the Coop in Cambridge and the Westwood Public Library where the librarian had let me help her unpack new books back when I was a little kid. I’d meant to talk to all sorts of people about this book because, in the process of working with Kathy I changed in ways that I felt proud about—I felt tougher, more dependable, more reliable—and I wanted to share her lessons with others so they could feel they’d had the wonderful opportunity to learn from the winningest coach in Ivy League history. I know I could have called these places, or emailed, but the book didn’t want that from me. It wanted me to talk to people face to face. Kathy is, after all, all about relationships, and the book wanted me to walk the talk.

So I got in my car (again), and drove from California to Massachusetts. To be clear, I didn’t come just for this book. I also had another book talking to me. The sequel to You Don’t Look Adopted had announced it wanted to be born, and that it wanted to be born by the Atlantic Ocean where I had grown up. It was adamant about this. Not one word leaked out there by the Pacific. Not even the letter “a”.

Here is where I will tell you a secret. I just completed Martha Beck’s 9-month Wayfinder Life Coach training program, and I am neck-deep in what it means to coach someone. I am so curious about coaching. I have had a life coach, Katie Preveulle, for almost twenty years, and I go to see her when I am stuck or need a life reframe. Without her, I would not be the me I am now. I would not have gone to New York to write You Don’t Look Adopted, that’s for sure. Martha Beck teaches that everyone has the answers inside of them, and our job as coaches is to ask powerful questions and to hold space so that the answers can find their way, like our book, to the light. The thing is, I don’t 100% ascribe to this method. I have had more than one situation in my life where I did not have the answer inside of me because limiting beliefs or blindness or who knows what kept me from even being able to imagine or think about a thing (go to New York and write a story you think no one will want to read). I needed someone to tell me what I could not see.

There are coaches (Kathy) who tell others to get their heads out of their asses. As a matter of fact, Grit and Wit was originally going to be called Get Your Head Out of Your Ass. This can be useful. If your head is up your ass, sometimes it’s so confusing up there you don’t even know that is what is going on. You just think the lights are out.

I’m staying with Kathy for a month or so here in Massachusetts so we can work on promoting the book together, but my secret agenda is to get coached. I want her to call me on my shit so I can see how it feels.

Well, gentle reader, it happened the first day I was here. When I talked about being hungry, Kathy said I should go to the grocery store to get the things I needed, and I did a funny thing. Not haha funny. More like, WTF funny. I slipped into a whiny baby. I caaaaaaaan’t, I said, leaning against the refrigerator. I’m too tirrrrrrred.

As I was whining, I was believing this sad story. I was too tired to act like an adult and feed myself. I’d existed for a week and a half on Taco Bell drive thru, and I just wanted someone to take my order, hand me two bean burritos without onions and a medium Diet Pepsi and leave me to drive and eat while Bird stared at me in disbelief, again, at how selfish humans are.

“You can,” Kathy snapped. Do you know how the Kennedy’s talk—the a’s so long it’s like someone stepped on it and dragged it a bit down the road?—that’s how Kathy talks, just so you can hear what I hear. It was like a slap and a drag all at the same time.

She coached me!

And she was right! My spine got straight. Adult me laughed at baby me rolling down there on the floor. I can! I have reservoirs of strength to pull from! If I am hungry, I can feed myself from a place that is called Whole Foods instead of Taco Bell. I can take care of myself! I am…wait for it…a life athlete!

I am a winner!

It gets even better. I inadvertently stole my soup from Whole Foods. It’s a story that does not bear repeating, but I proved Milton Friedman (no such thing as a free lunch) wrong.

Lunch was totally free.

I am sorry Whole Foods.

I will made amends. Just not right now.

I’m too tired.

(Kathy, if you are reading this, I’m joking. I’m headed out right now.)