What's Your Personal Impact: My Sh!t Tattoo Brought Me Home

changereflection

Nov 15

My first tattoo at 18 years old was Earth on my inside ankle. It was a shit tattoo but the feels were there. Let’s be real. Shit tattoos can be expected in the mid 90s from an Alabama roadside tattoo dive called the Branding Iron. My shit tattoo of Earth was paid in cash and picked off the wall. Luckily my taste and discernment of tattoos has radically improved with age.

I have few regrets and most I’ve righted or come to terms with over the years as best I could. One regret is what I didn’t choose as a career. I didn’t study environmental science in college regretfully, though, for sexual harassment, typically gendered reasons at the time.

I can see how the path I did choose allows me to bring skills and perspective to climate work that are needed at this time. And, things come back around, don’t they? So a few years ago, when I started to feel an urgent, emotional pull to healing “Soul & Soil," I wasn’t completely surprised. I also didn’t know what this meant at the time or what my impact would be because it seemed so out of left field from what I was ‘doing’ in my career as an academic.

Fast-forward to the end of 2021 and holy shit, it’s all coming together! I’m hardheaded so maybe it’s taken awhile. I’ve been learning to feel and follow my ‘YES’ inklings more than my others and it’s landed me here. One of my ‘yes’ choices included earning a Climate Change and Health Certificate in 2020 from Yale’s School of Public Health. I was a big piece that helped to tie together the loose ends.

So now, I am right where I want to be = coaching folks through transformation and into their impact and building my own impact and community. I’m loving working with higher ed folks through my Mentorship Coaching programs. And partnering with universities to provide holistic professional development. It’s all about how to reconnect to purpose, values, mind-body, and nature so that we live an authentic life in community where you can shine out your impact on the world and make it a better place.

And so for me, this looks like expanding into Climate Coaching work.

This week, I’m launching my Embodied Climate Action work and a new partnership with the Somatic Wilderness Therapy Institute on climate work through a mindful, embodied, nature-based framework.

For me this work is about shifting our mindsets from exploitative to regenerative. It’s about feeling into our feels and body via nature experiences and mindfulness tools so that we develop our own personalized climate impact that aligns with our values AND the action that moves the needle on climate crisis.

We are kicking it off with a free Webinar this Wednesday sharing how we’ve all come to this work as a former academic (me), a journalist, and a therapist. We will also be sharing upcoming climate support groups we are leading in Dec and Jan. The support groups are a ‘pay what you can’ model to offer access to important conversations for folks who don’t have funds all the way to those who have a little extra to pay it forward. 2/3 of funds will support administrative fees for the events and overhead with a 1/3 of funds collected will be donated to Climate Justice Alliance.

How this all connects to my tattoo? My own journey as a coach has been about coaching myself back to myself and into my current work. One of the things I love about coaching is that as a coach, I have to do the things for myself that I ask of others. There’s no emotional or spiritual bypassing in this work if I want to come across as authentic and be able to access my gifts of intuition and creativity. When I’m sitting being honest and in my feels. I’m called to support folks living their impact and helping you tie it to our collective climate justice crisis.

So I ask you today, what is the impact the world needs from you?

What/who do you need to come back to?
Where are you hiding and playing small?
What part of you did you leave behind in order to pursue something more rationale?
What tugs at your heart?
What topics, stories, and ideas do you keep coming back to?
What’s your shit tattoo of? Literally or figuratively.
What are your values and how do you bring them to your daily life?

My top values are learning, nature, connection, and community so it’s no wonder I’m drawn to this work. If you’re curious, jump on one of the Webinar to learn more about climate action and what feelings and mindset has to do with it all.