Awaken Hope with Stephanie Fitzsimmons

Stephanie Fitzsimmons. My story began at the end. In the winter of 2019, I found myself at a crossroads.  My teenage children were preparing to leave the nest.  My relationship was on life support and anything but romantic.   Waking up to go to work filled me with literal dread.  I had spent years providing, imparting, devoting, allowing and otherwise being responsible for everyone else in my life and I had inadvertently forgotten about myself .  (Whoops.)  A drastic change was in order - a turn of the tide , you might say - but I didn’t know where I would ever find the time or energy to start over. If only I could press pause, take a minute or two to figure things out … Enter 2020.  All those moments I had spent daydreaming about what I could do if I just had more time...here it was, served to me on a global pandemic-sized platter.  Thanks to a divine pause in the relentless swirling of the universe, the days spread out before me like a limitless blank canvas.  I got up early.  I meditated in the stillness, read books that stirred my soul, practiced yoga and ate healthy foods.  I took long, meandering walks by the ocean and grew a garden. I lived.  But most of all, I dreamed.  I dreamed of a life where all of this was possible.  Where the work I did was passion-driven and personally meaningful.  Where my relationships with others were warm, loving, supportive and deeply satisfying.  Where I finally knew who I was and what I wanted to be when I grew up. About this time, I discovered “life coaching”. Unlike counseling or therapy, coaching focuses on where you are at the moment and where you want to go.  I was done looking at the past.  It wasn’t changing. Studying it in the depth finder wasn’t helping me with the infinite ocean before me.  I realized that if I wanted things to be different, I needed to focus on today to make tomorrow better.  As I learned more about the forward-looking philosophy of life coaching, a new dream emerged.  The dream of having someone to guide me and travel beside me as I began this new stage of my life. And then, the dream of actually being that person for others who were feeling as stuck and hopeless as I had been.  All my endings had brought me to a new beginning. In the fall of 2021, I completed the Courageous Living Coach Certification program and received my Associate d Certified Coach credentials from the International Coaching Federation in the summer of 2022. In the fall of 2022, I joined the Insight Coaching Community, completing the Insight Coach Certification and the Professional Coach Certification in 2023. After receiving my Insight Coach Certification, to my delight, I was asked to join the team at ICC, where I work together with a group of world class coaches to lead training calls and support other coaches in an amazing community. Every day I am a little bit closer to living the life that once I had only dreamed could be possible. It is my desire to help others see their own possibility and experience what it means to live their best life. Stephanie Fitzsimmons, Certified Insight Life Coach Website: https://turningtideslifecoaching.com