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Do you have question about your destiny? Do you wonder what your purpose is, what your focus should be, or whether you are going in too many seemingly disparate directions, at least according to others? Then please look around you. Listen carefully. Examine your world and what’s going on in it. Who are the people who keep presenting themselves to you? Who are the people and situations you seek out? Do certain connections keep occurring or repeating themselves as a theme? Do you try at times to concentrate on something different, but find yourself drawn back to a former interest or activity, or certain kinds of people?
Every so-often, I receive important messages. No, I don’t hear voices, or a bellowing voice from above that is the Universe, or my Maker, shouting instructions or bulletins intended just for me to hear. I don’t go about my days looking for signs or harbingers that will show me the way to go when I am in doubt. Still, these signs do come to me in moments of quiet and prayerfulness. They also come to me sometimes as insistent thoughts or screaming insights when I am in the middle of something, and am not particularly wishing for these intrusions in my activity. Like many people, I may even resist signs and insights that ought to be very clear, as they keep cropping up and yelling at me.
Yesterday was one of those days that seemed to be sending me messages.. Yesterday morning I attended a group in which I happen to be one of a couple of “babies” among the participants. Most of the members are in their late 70’s, 80’s and 90’s. As we went around the room and introduced ourselves to new members, or to those who had not attended recently, a theme emerged. Lively discussion ensued and it turned into more of a support group than one for the purpose of our gathering. Members shared difficulties and emotions related to having to leave their homes as elders, to losing a spouse, and to having life-changing decisions made by others who did not necessarily listen to their needs. The perspective of the adult children who are Sandwich Generationers was also shared. I thought it was a moving and informative couple of hours, despite our not having done much of what we had gone there to do.
I then headed home, stopping first at the grocery store. There I met a former client, a very lovely person, who shared the latest goings-on with her adult kids, both of whom had been placed for adoption by the agency I founded and directed for about thirty years. This person, a widow now, and exactly my own age, has found herself in the position of caring for her grandchildren and putting her own needs and goals on hold, as she has had to do many times before in life.
I finished my shopping and got home, to receive a surprise visit by another former adoption client with a much younger child, having complicated problems and the mom is having an extremely hard time locating appropriate services that address those problems.
That evening, a member of the morning group, telephoned me at my earlier invitation, to discuss his own life and my request to write a guest blog post for me about his experiences as a nonagenarian.
The events of the day caused me to do some reflection about the people who had been put in my path just in one day. As I deepen my understanding of how I can best assist and reach people in my coaching practice, and as I zero in on the best clients for me, and the ones I am truly “meant to help”, I keep hearing from other coaches and from expert mentors, that it doesn’t work well to specialize in too broad an area. I have tried and tried to follow this wisdom, but there is something within me that keeps resisting it. I keep returning to my gut feeling that I have lived a life of varied experiences, and that each of the things I moved through, no matter how difficult, has taught me a lot, and has enabled me to gain skills and even some wisdom that can be of benefit to others. I don’t really want to narrow down my offerings to only one of those areas, and they all relate to each other in my way of thinking. Each and every time I give in and try to focus my offerings and the language I speak to prospective clients out there, I get called back to my original way of thinking.
I heard the message that I am doing the right things. My focus on Loss, Grief and Tough Life Changes, as well as the theme of loss, grief and issues of the Adoption Community, are the right things for me to do. People do seem to gravitate to me around these things, and that was made remarkably clear by the events of just one day of my life.
Why then would I doubt this? I know this was a day of messages telling me to listen to my gut, to my life, and to hear my own destiny. What if I had decided to ignore this day, or to view it as simply a succession of chance events?
Listen carefully and you will hear your destiny.
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Iris Arenson-Fuller, CPC, ACC helps clients with tough life changes, loss and trauma, when they want to find a new normal, and new ways of being happy in the world, regardless of the pain of the past.
She also works with the Adoption Community on issues of adoption loss and all other adoption-related issues. (Adoptees, Birth Parents, Adoptive Parents)
Iris has been a writer/poet all of her life. She is a mother, (adoptive and biological) grandmother and certified professional coach, and founded and ran a licensed adoption agency for about 30 years.
Iris’s work has appeared in a variety of print and on line publications
Watch for Iris’s redesigned, fresh new website coming soon!
Iris can be reached at 860-242-5941 to discuss how she can help you.
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ir**@vi*******************.com
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