Why Creative Coaching? Why Awesome Events?
Who am I...
My name is Lisha and I am a west coast islander. I was born in the Powell River hospital in June 1974. Prime Spring Salmon fishing season. My Dad took the doctor out on the boat when Mum’s contractions stopped in the afternoon. My folks were living in Lund, BC at the time. They were Back-to-the-Landers, not hippies or draft dodgers. Dad designed and built every family home we lived in while I was growing up. Lund, Sointula and then Victoria. Every home had a big garden, a well-stocked pantry and big dining table for friends and family to gather around. My sister and I were wild-child country kids with ponies and bikes, roaming free, making up all sorts of games with the neighbourhood pack.
The elementary school in Sointula was small. From K-grade 6 there were maybe 12 kids in my class. Then we moved to Victoria, the big city, and everything changed. Grade 7 at Royal Oak public school was a shock to my system. The girls were wearing makeup and going on dates! 12 years old and I was totally capable of running our family fishboat for hours at a time by myself but had no idea how to be cool. When grade 8 started and I was put in private school, wearing a uniform and all new faces again, I remember thinking “No matter what, I will fit in” and dumbed down my smartness, paid close attention to the popular kids and all my energy went into hanging out with my friends and being cool.
It’s taken 35 years from then to now, and I have finally let go of the desire to fit in, stopped trying to be anything I’m not. I trust my intuition. I love my weirdness. I appreciate my intelligence. And I am extremely grateful for the gifts I’ve been given. Walking my authentic path has brought everything good into my life. I’ve studied English Lit, Theatre, Education and Women’s Studies at university. Followed my passion to spend a summer studying Acting Shakespeare at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London. I’ve travelled the world and ended up settled back on the west coast of BC, Canada, making a home I love on one of the most beautiful islands imaginable.
Looking back, I can see how the best times, happiest, most fulfilling times in my life have been when I express myself from a place of kindness, interconnection, transcendence and creativity. Now I can put words to the common thread in all the positive things in my life. I see how this awareness doesn’t do away with challenge and pain, but has taught me ways to allow pain, fear, shame to pass more easily, in a gentler, more constructive way.
And through the work I do now, I hope to help others do the same.
(to be continued…)