I am a newly trained Satir Life Coach. I bring to this practice fifteen years of social work experience and more than thirty years as a licensed attorney. My education, training and experience as a Social Worker and a lawyer provide a solid foundation for my new career as a life coach.
In June 2018, I retired from the practice of law and spent the next three years taking time for myself. During the COVID epidemic, I completed the Satir Coaching Certificate Program and am pleased to open my office with established like-minded colleagues.
Coaching is a process intended to help a person learn how to maximize their own internal resources to solve a problem or reach a goal. It is a form of experiential learning in which the relationship between the coach and the individual is paramount.
A life coach offers support, a fresh, objective perspective and facilitates the discovery of new options and new possibilities. A life coach is a listener, a sounding board, a guide and a confidant.
A Satir Life Coach is trained in the systemic methodology and growth model developed by Virginia Satir, known by many as the “Mother of Family Therapy.” Satir famously said, “The problem is not the problem, it’s how one copes with the problem.” Thus coaching, using Satir’s model, focuses not on the perceived problem but on the use and power of one’s internal resources to address life’s challenges. Satir was brilliant in many ways, but one was her skill at asking questions intended to shift’s one’s behavior from old intransient ways of coping into new and more effective coping strategies.
I believe the Satir Model as applied to coaching facilitates growth and the learning of new coping skills . Thus my goal as a coach is to help each individual access their strengths and resources as they move toward resolution, a decision or a new possibility.
About me: I have a undergraduate degree in education from Jacksonville State University, but I never taught school. I obtained my M.S.W. from the UNC School of Social Work in 1980 and my law degree from the UNC School of Law in 1988. I have worked as a Social Worker in a county department of Social Services, as a Social Worker at Duke Hospital, as Special Projects Director for the North Carolina Counsel on the Status of Women, as Director of the UNC Campus Y and as a lawyer in private practice. I have learned from all of my professional experiences, but mostly I have learned from trying to live a life of congruence in partnership and friendship with others. I love to spend time at the beach where I am up every morning before sunrise to take photographs and enjoy the solitude. I love movies on the big screen, Broadway plays, to read books that are made with paper and Tar Heel basketball. I love to travel and I have a few more places on my bucket list yet to see. I enjoy writing and I hope someday to write something worth sharing.
