The path to your integrated self starts here

We have been taught to compartmentalize ourselves.

There is who I am at work.

Who I am at home.

Who I am in relationship.

Who I am in community.

Who I am when I am leading.

Who I am when I am hurting.

But I don't believe we are compartmentalized people.

We are whole people.

And everything is connected.

For more than 20 years, I have worked with people as they navigate grief, leadership, relationships, transition, purpose, and the sometimes difficult journey of becoming more fully themselves. My background in organizational leadership and integral studies has taught me to pay attention to the connections.

Because what shows up in one place usually shows up somewhere else.

We Bring Our Whole Selves With Us

The wound that shows up in my intimate relationships may also be sitting beside me in the boardroom.

The part of me that learned to stay quiet in my family may struggle to use my voice when I lead.

The part of me that learned I had to be useful to be loved may become the person who takes care of everyone at work.

The grief I have not tended may affect how much joy I am able to hold.

And the gifts I have spent a lifetime developing may have grown from the very places where I was wounded.

This is why I don't believe our personal development and professional development can really be separated.

We bring ourselves everywhere we go.

Integration Is Not Perfection

When I talk about becoming more integrated, I am not talking about becoming a better version of yourself.

I am not interested in helping you fix yourself.

Integration is about becoming more able to be in relationship with all of who you are—your gifts, your wounds, your knowing, your grief, your joy, your contradictions, your body, your spirit, and your connection to something larger than yourself.

Some parts of ourselves we celebrate.

Some parts we hide.

Some parts we have judged because the world taught us they were unacceptable.

And some parts we have become so disconnected from that we no longer remember they belong to us.

The journey toward integration asks us to bring those pieces back into relationship.

To re-member ourselves.

Who Taught You What Success Looks Like?

Part of this journey also requires us to question the yardsticks we have inherited.

I write and teach about living in a culture where what is considered right, real, and true is often measured against what is White and male.

That yardstick doesn't just shape institutions. It shapes us.

It influences what we call professional. What we call successful. What we call intelligent.

What we call strong. What we call healed. What we believe leadership should look like.

And too often, that equation leaves out nature and the divine.

It leaves out ways of knowing that come through the body.

It leaves out relationship.

It leaves out ancestors.

It leaves out community.

It leaves out the wisdom of the natural world.

So sometimes personal and professional growth isn't about climbing higher on the ladder.

Sometimes it is about asking whether the ladder is leaning against the right wall.

Sometimes growth means remembering what you knew before the world told you who you were supposed to be.

Our Wounds and Our Gifts Are Two Sides of the Same Coin

I often say that our wounds and our gifts are two sides of the same coin.

Every wound has a gift.

And I believe the deeper the wound, the bigger the gift.

This doesn't mean that I believe we are wounded so that we can receive a gift. It doesn't make what happened to us okay. And it doesn't mean we should rush past our grief looking for the lesson.

We have to be willing to heal all the way to the bottom of the wound.

Because the gift is down there.

Think about the places where you have been wounded and what you had to learn because of them.

Perhaps you learned to read a room before anyone said a word. That may have begun as survival. Healed, that same capacity may become discernment.

Perhaps you learned to take care of everyone around you because no one was taking care of you. That wound may hold a profound gift for nurturing and caring for others. But until it is healed, you may give that care away while having difficulty receiving it yourself.

Perhaps you learned to make yourself small because it wasn't safe to be fully seen. Somewhere underneath that wound may be the gift of knowing how to see those whom the world overlooks.

The wound and the gift are connected.

When the wound is still running the show, our gifts can become distorted. Discernment can become hypervigilance. Caring can become over-functioning. Leadership can become control. Strength can become an inability to receive help.

This is why healing matters.

We aren't trying to get rid of the wound as though it never happened. We are tending it deeply enough that it no longer has to organize our lives.

We go down.

Through the stories.

Through the protection.

Through the anger.

Through the grief.

All the way to the bottom.

And somewhere down there, we discover that what we thought was only a wound has also been holding something precious.

A gift.

Something that belongs to us.

Something waiting to be reclaimed.

This is integration.

Not cutting away the wounded parts of ourselves so that only the acceptable pieces remain.

It is becoming whole enough to reclaim the gifts that have been waiting for us inside the places we were once afraid to go.

The Path Starts Here

This is the work I love doing with people.

Coaching, for me, is not about standing outside your life and telling you what you should do.

It is about creating a place where we can look together.

At the patterns.

At the wounds.

At the gifts.

At the relationships.

At the systems you are part of.

At what your body knows.

At what your spirit knows.

At what your life may already be trying to tell you.

Because personal growth is professional growth.

Professional growth is relational growth.

Relational growth is communal growth.

And healing in one place creates movement in another.

Everything is connected.

The path to your integrated self isn't really a path toward becoming someone new.

It is a path toward remembering and reclaiming more of who you already are.

The path to your integrated self starts here.