by Allison Iantosca
An early November morning— the austerity of the angles as the yellow sun stretches through now courageously unburdened branches. A moment, the exhale of a frosty breath, when it seems life simply cannot get any better. When by innocently remarking on it is almost to lose it. But the utter purity surrounds you and you can’t help but keep on the lookout for more and more and more.
And then sometimes life seems to just as quickly linger at the outer edge of complexity. When it would be nice if someone could just dust off that magic wand and wave it over your head a few times to make even one single piece of the ridiculousness go right for a few hours.
The familiarity with these polarities stretches my humanness; both almost too much to take in the potency of their pure forms. And so I retreat to the middle; a place of repose and flow and safety. Prior to a friend sending me the link to the Elizabeth Gilbert talk about HOME I didn’t have a way to express this center place, this place of knowing and being that could not be misplaced by either “too good to be true” or “too bad to believe”.
Home. Where you are normal and reassured and regular— not by anyone else’s standards but by your own sense of personal center. “Your home is whatever you love in this world more than you love yourself” explains Ms. Gilbert “where you can dedicate your energies with such singular devotion that the ultimate results become inconsequential…as long as you never forget where you rightfully live.”
This Home is what coaching should feel like. An exploration of the polarities that you explore as you seek to find your center. A way to understand what you might tend to or resist; not because one is better than the other but because they are both deep parts of you in service of something critically important. Home is where you can bring them both to light creating the possibility of exploration and then choice.
This Home is meant to be your soul center, not some diluted, half minded attempt to minimize extremes and polarities. It’s the place you come back to when the good or the bad won’t be your ending definition. The place where you are most you. Coaching is a warm welcome home.
Allison Iantosca is a Gestalt International Study Center (GISC) trained coach with extensive leadership and management experience. She currently serves as president of FH Perry Builders in Hopkinton, Massachusetts.