What does a Rapunzel cake and a potter's work have in common?

Wow so far May has been quite a ride!  How's it been for you?  Those who are into the meaning of eclipses did say that the one we have just experienced would bring about huge shifts.  I don't know about you but I feel there have been reverberations for a lot longer than that.

This is really a time for great learning if you can allow it, and often that can come with quite a bit of pain.  Being stretched is radically different to being comfortable and on the plus side it is what leads to personal growth.  I always remember what Michael, a spiritual guy I used to hang out with said at times like this, which was think about how a cup is fashioned.  The potter has to form the clay into a shape using her wheel and hands.  It takes time.  Then when it has set, she will paint and glaze.  For all this beauty to last, it has to be fired in the kiln at a very high temperature. It is quite a process to get a thing of such beauty and yet the end result can be appreciated for a long time by many.  We too are a work in progress.

Using my own analogy, recently it was my eldest's birthday.  She wanted a Rapunzel cake and in the picture you can see what I created.  The last bit of icing was completed at midnight, the day before her birthday.  Both my parents and my husband thought we had done enough and any more would spoil it.  I wanted to carry on but they managed to convince me that my daughter would love it just as it was and she did!  None of this would have been possible without the support of some great friends.  Caroline provided a barbie and gave her hair extensions and pretty floral hair piece; Anthea from Krempa Kupcakes gave me loads of advice on how to ice the cake and Emma provided the invaluable kugelhopf silicon tin.  I am very grateful for each of them for helping me to fulfil a little girl's dream and thereby make her birthday even more special.  It shows if we step up to the plate, we can achieve great things and that many of the best things come through collaboration.

I hold onto all these thoughts as I enter a new stage of my life.  Last Friday, I celebrated the end of an era - an 11 year relationship with a corporate.  I am now giving myself space to create a new kind of life, one in which I get to revel in being a Mum and help to build the kind of world I want to live in through the work I do.  At times I get impatient and then I remember, it's important to take small steps and do silly, frivolous stuff and take stock after such a major transition.

This post was inspired by Grace Kelly's timely words If your pushing and desperate to make it happen you've just LOST! Time to relax, breathe, slow down, pour a glass of wine and let the Universe do some of the work tonight.  They spoke to me and I wanted to share them with you.  And now I am curious, what has this post sparked off in you?

The green shoots of change

Lately I have been writing fewer posts on the blog and there are many reasons for that, one of which is that I have not felt the urge to write. Tonight despite the lateness of the hour, I feel as if I am walking on air; it is as if I am seeing green shoots appearing in a landscape that felt rather barren up until now.

I am wrestling with what could be a huge change in my life and at the moment I am not ready to share the details with you. Suffice to say that it made loads of sense when my good friend Michael, who is into all things astrological said that we are in the midst of huge transition. What I have read it to mean is that we are moving from a time which has been characterised by lack of structure and subtlety to the point of frustration, to a time of action. Bring it on is what I say.

It is not a seamless transition, there is often a whole load of flotsam that comes with it. I have certainly had my share in the last 24 hours which has included finding an infestation of carpet beetle in the house to putting unleaded petrol into a car that takes diesel! There is more I could mention but that's in the past and I want to focus elsewhere.

Two great things have come to pass today. I found out that I have been selected to coach a senior person from a professional services background which is wonderful because the client could have chosen others! The second was stumbling across a group of fantastic, resourceful women. I attended something as a piece of research for an idea that I have and came away with so much useful stuff that I did not expect which was very uplifting.

I am sharing all this with you because it is often when we are at our lowest ebb, when we think that we can take no more that something shifts and new opportunities appear. If this resonates with you, then reflect on the message of Coelho's The Alchemist. We tend to face our biggest challenges as we near our goal. Don't give up, keep believing.

This photo is brought to you courtesy of JBPhotographer

Beware the ides of March

I recall when I announced to some colleagues that I was setting up my own business that one of them said how hard it was to go solo. Back then the comment barely registered. Now some time into it, I really do understand what they were trying to say.

Reflecting back on March, it was a very tough month. In many ways it should not have been. I was busier than I had ever been since starting my own business and yet....

There was a moment when I felt that what I had set out to do with Whole Self Leadership had failed. I became paralysed by fear which made the feeling of stuckness even more real. I was incapable of making even basic decisions or running the house well. All this was because two initiatives that I had put together with others did not get off the ground. Insufficient people wanted what we were offering. That's rejection and it's painful however many times it happens.

What I now realise thanks to a very helpful chat with Qdosology is that the act of destruction or death is all part of the process on the journey of transition. In other words for me to find my true path for now, I need to let go of that which is not serving me. I particularly liked his way of explaining it using the caterpillar's life cycle. I am currently in the chrysalis stage and trying to punch my way out so that I can be a beautiful butterfly. I have never been very good at waiting.

It also helps me to accept that whilst I am a Mum that is not the whole of my identity. In other words whilst I would have liked to have had a blog that was nominated for the MADs, I was not surprised or disappointed when it was not.

So what's next? Karen and I had a very useful discussion on where to take Minerva's Mind so watch this space and I have made a decision to find 5 minutes each day to meditate probably using incense or an oil burner to help focus the mind. Putting this out here means there is now some accountability to doing it so I can report back on what I learnt.

This post has been written as part of the writing workshop over at Sleep is for the Weak and is on sharing how I am dealing with a deep felt sense of rejection.

The transition from the end of maternity leave to the next stage

One particular group of people that I am passionate about is Mums and it is one of my two focal points of my coaching practice. One reason for this focus is that I am a mother myself but it goes much further than that and to help illustrate what I mean, I am going to share some of my own journey.

In short becoming a Mum led to major change in my life. Prior to having my two girls, I worked for the largest professional services firm in the world. My clients were organisations like the British Library, the Inland Revenue and so forth. Often I would leave the house before it was light and come back long into the night. My focus was work and I loved the cut and thrust of the work place. Interestingly for me there was not a seismic shift after my first child was born. I returned to work when she was nine months on a 70% contract. I was able to negotiate 3 days at the office or at a client and half a day at home or put two half days together to go to training events which invariably were on a Friday. There was a shift in that my family became a higher priority than my job. However it still meant making a certain number of sacrifices for the job such as spending three days a week for two months up in Newcastle, working with a client!

The transition came after daughter number two. It culminated with a number of other changes in my life. One was that we moved out of the centre of St Albans to a village just outside Hitchin three weeks before the birth. Despite the relatively short distance between the two places, our lifestyle changed completely in lots of little ways. So for example I had to drive everywhere whereas before I had walked everywhere. It took a long time to feel settled here because many mothers I met had established groups of friends from either their antenatal class or a first baby group. I also realised that I had changed. I no longer relished the idea of the commute into London even on a part-time basis. My main priority was my family and having two children, 15 months apart, meant that the first year was exhausting, and being a full-time Mum in a village could be very isolating at times.

The saving grace for me was that my company had a policy which allowed every member of staff access to a coach for a maximum of six sessions per year. I realised that I needed to make use of that service to sort out what was most important to me and enable me to work out what to do at the end of my maternity leave. In going through that process I realised that despite the potential risks, that going it alone and setting up my own business where I became a WFHM was what I wanted to do. The coaching gave me the clarity I needed to make the decision and the push to go out there and do it. Now I do what I love – coaching.

Reflecting on all of that, it became clear that motherhood is a major time of transition and gives women the opportunity to review and reprioritise what is important to them. However sometimes with all that is going on, women do not have the time or the access to the resources they need to make the best choices for themselves. For all these reasons, I and another mother who is an HR professional run group sessions for Mums with young families who are considering what they want to do following their maternity leave. We run a group session because very often Mums develop their own groups of friends as mothers either through the NCT or other routes, and it allows us to offer the service at a much lower rate than a one on one coaching session. For more information contact me at kcwgriffiths@msn.com