Pottery and crafts.

Not exactly my forte, and not exactly what springs to mind when mentioning my name in circles I’m known.

Yet this is exactly what I spent four hours doing on a weekend in October 2020.

Why?

Simple. Quality time with my daughter.

It was a fitting, uplifting end to a troubled week. In between bouts of silence due to our concerted effort on our art, my daughter and I chatted and giggled…  

… Em in particular chuckling away at her old man’s ability to change the lyrics of every Beatles song we listened to to something profoundly crude, naughty and dirty.

I’ve been honing that particular craft for years. I don’t get out much. And regardless, there’s much healing in laughter.

Not that anyone was under the illusion we were out of the woods with Emily’s struggles at the time… far from it.

Once Saturday waves goodbye, Sunday inevitably rolls around once more… and Sunday’s inevitably concede to Monday’s… and Monday’s mean a return to school.

To make matters worse, Covid-19 was in the mix… with a sizeable section of Emily’s year – including all but one of her school friends –  self-isolating for the next two weeks due to yet another student allegedly being infected.

Back to the events of the previous Monday.

With the warning bells ringing on the previous Sunday afternoon when we’d come over to see the kids, Anna and I spent a good thirty minutes seeking to unravel the cause of Em’s anxiety. I know her mom, Victoria, did the same after we’d left.

Just before 7am on the Monday morning, I texted Victoria to see how the land lied. Em was still asleep.

Fifteen minutes later a Facetime call came in. It was Victoria. She was distraught having witnessed her daughter sobbing in deep despair at the prospect of going into school.

Victoria, a teacher at the local primary school (where her entire 5th year was closed on Friday because of another Covid case), had to get her “face on” to get to work and serve her class of nine and ten-year-olds… and going in late, or taking yet another day off to deal with Em, wasn’t really on.

I told her to get to school, and leave Emily – and her getting to school – to me. At lightning speed I’d showered and hit the road.

Anna, who was delivering an early morning Coaching call ahead of several Discovery Calls, didn’t even know I’d gone. Not until a few hours later.

Back then we lived 19 miles south of where we now reside, and during the 29.5 mile journey north to where Victoria and the kids live, I went to and fro in several conversations: Emily’s Head of Year at school, her Child Psychotherapist, her Grandfather and, of course, Victoria.

By the time I arrived, the latter had gone to work. Em had tentatively, and very reluctantly, started getting ready for school… her mom had served notice I was coming to take her in.

We’re not parents who force our kids to do anything. We never have been and we’ve never needed to be. They’ve been raised in an environment where taking personal responsibility for oneself has been the norm… and as I mentioned in one of my previous messages, Emily is a highly conscientious student.

Too conscientious at times.

As I walked into her bedroom, she was staring into a mirror, subtly applying the make-up she can get away with at school. I kissed her on the cheek, and said, “What’s going on, BabyG?”

We sat on the bed.

It was almost two hours later when the conversation was done.

I’d been Coaching for two decades at this juncture. Over those years I’d conducted thousands of sessions with hundreds of people, from C-level executives of large, global corporations, to small business owners and everything in between…

… yet Monday’s conversation with my daughter was by far the toughest of all.

I didn’t think of this interaction with my daughter as a Coaching session of course – and I’d never announce it as such even if I did. Any professionally qualified Coach will know you should never attempt to formally Coach family, for very good reasons I won’t divulge here in the interests of time…

… rather, I simply “held the space” and used the skills I’m renowned for for as long as my daughter was willing to engage in the conversation.

It sucked the life out of me.

By the time we were done, and I greeted Emily’s grandparents on their arrival just before lunchtime, I was conscious of just how much it had taken its toll.

Only an experienced, qualified Coach would have some understanding of why. 

See, to truly Coach someone takes far more skill and energy than most people imagine. The world is full of people who think they can Coach.

Very few can.

And one of the most vital skills in Coaching is one of the most psychologically and physically draining – to remain fully present, emptying your mind of anything to do with you, your life, your history, your perspectives and beliefs, and be totally immersed in the other person’s world.

Yet if I was to honour my daughter in the way I know she needed honouring, and serve her in the way she needed to be served, I had to take this to an entirely different level.

I had to hold a space of NOT being her father.

That’s why it took almost everything I had… 

… to the degree I had to call Elaine Frostman-Clarke, Head of my Faculty at the Conscious Coaching Academy™, to take the Entrepreneurial Mastery Inner Circle™ (EMIC) session later that day.

She was only too willing to help. As a highly skilled and qualified Coach herself, she understood why I asked: self-management is another crucial skill coaching – and I knew I wouldn’t be at my best for my EMIC members.

Em said she felt “much lighter” as a consequence of our time together – and it put her in good stead for the session she was due to have with her Psychotherapist later that afternoon.

She may not have got to school that day, however, she got the most important education she could have got – the one she needed most – an education in Self –  the one which brings the light of consciousness to the darkness of our ignorance.

This being the lost education of our species… and you don’t need to look far in today’s world to see the evidence.

Warmly,

Christian

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