Wow what a decade can do!

I live in front of a park. This morning, I watched a toddler stroll along slowly with his mom hand in hand as I sat down onto my meditation cushion. It made me remember that feeling of my youngest son’s hand when I would walk next to him and a quote I crafted almost a decade ago now, “If you slow down, so does the clock.”

Also, this week a client responded to a checking-in email I had sent him with personal vulnerability that struck a few too many familiar chords. He shared his struggle to find balance and focus on his career in the aftermath of a divorce, a vulnerable truth that resonated with my own experiences of resilience and recovery.

This all threw me back in time…back a decade. I am not one to look back as I’m always looking forward (that’s the coach in me and why I’m maybe not a therapist - ha!). I reflected on when I learned to be present, to slow down, to be in the moment…now. Not looking backward or forward.

It was a perfect storm. I had post-natal depression and had gone undiagnosed so felt numb and unmotivated and unloving. I had two healthy little boys under 21 months, was living abroad, and had no family on this side of the pond. I had started my coaching business and was doing it part-time in the attic while breastfeeding. My husband lost his banking job, the landlord of our rental apartment ended our lease suddenly, our au pair decided to go home early, and our housekeeper quit…all within 24 hours!

I had a sudden very real vision of ending my life, but instead my body went into, what the doctors later called, ‘disassociation freeze response’. My body shut down and I was paralyzed. I could hear but I couldn’t speak or move. The ambulance came. After a night in the hospital, I ended up being referred to the best psychiatric clinic in the UK, the Priory, for outpatient treatment. There I met Sacha, the therapist who opened my eyes, heart and spirt to compassionate training, meditation and being present. Over the coming few years he helped me heal. But the storm was far from over.

We were forced to relocate from expensive Wimbledon to the university town of Cambridge. My mom had emergency triple by-pass surgery back in the US. My husband was still unemployed. My marriage was disintegrating, no matter how many hours of couples therapy we had committed to.

10 years ago exactly, I moved out, and that shameful word ‘divorce’ became my reality. Flat broke without a penny to my name, with two toddlers in tow, and a still emerging self-employed coaching business, my parents lent me the deposit to buy 45% of a small new build as part of the low-income housing program in the UK. Phew! I had a roof over our heads. A basic need was met.

And so I started to rebuild. My life as a single mom, my finances, my social circle, my business, my inner strength and courage. Every day was a challenge but I stayed resilient, relying on my meditation and mindfulness practice to keep me grounded. I found a budgeting app that helped me out of debt. I started road cycling. I made new sustainability colleagues locally. I cuddled my little boys who kept me smiling and laughing and being present.

I love coaching and supporting clients through their life challenges probably because I have had my fair share as well. I know that anything is possible. I know that time heals all wounds. I know that we each have an incredible strength within us to achieve whatever we want to. I have taught my boys from day one, “never give up” and yesterday I learned it in Italian “non mollare mai”.

Convinced that we all have the strength to overcome and achieve, I'm here to guide you through. Eager to transform your challenges into stepping stones? Click here to learn how we can work together.

And, as my sixth GreenBiz24 conference nears in two weeks, I looked back and realized that I started writing my column for GreenBiz that same year, a decade ago. Look how far we’ve all come!

Every day is a gift. We are on this journey together.

Shannon Houde is an ICF-certified coach with over 20 years as a recruiter and trusted advisor to evolving change leaders from Managers to CSOs. She has mentored and trained 1,000+ change leaders over 3,000 hours in ESG and corporate sustainability and is the author of Good Work: How to Build a Career That Makes a Difference in the World. Apply for a trial coaching session here!