I was 35 when I started my coach training. Which is to say, I was 35 before I found the work that delights me to the core, that is fully aligned with my values, that keeps me happily on the edge of my learning curve at all times.
Before that, I was a bread baker, personal chef, business manager, website builder, tech tutor – oh so many perfectly fine but not-quite-there things.
In my All Up in It conversation, Sarah Hines describes her own diverse work background – the work that led her to create her business Grief Advocacy – as gathering the firewood that she has then built into the welcoming camp fire of her life’s work.
Sarah also talks about legacy in a way that reminds me far more of a stone being dropped into a pond than plaques on benches or names on buildings, an impact the fullness of which we may never be aware.
You can watch a quick preview of our conversation here, or just dive right into 32 minutes of heart-filling, thought-provoking goodness.
Key moments in the conversation include…
…how Sarah describes herself as a human:
- She’s a firekeeper, in a lodge, stirring a pot, a little inward, waiting for people to come to sit down by the fire and have some soup and have a conversation about whatever comes up
- Someone who has the ability to hold onto the space where others are supposed to be
- Until recently, she’s felt like a gatherer of wood. About a year ago, she started feeling a sense that it’s time to stop gathering and make the fire
- Who sees other people as integral to her self-discover process, that it’s in interacting with others that have guided her to what wood to gather and fire to start
…what Sarah is all up in:
- Her company, Grief Advocacy, is about building a relationship with grief such that we can see it as a reminder of what is importance to us
- Writing her love letter – her legacy – to all of the things that are super important to her and that grief has taught her. This is the fire she’s building
- Legacy, to Sarah, is how we be in the world, how we interact with others and that we don’t always know what it’s going to be. She shares a moving story of her best friend, who died unexpectedly in 2015, and how her legacy in Sarah’s life shows up
- How going to the edge of our knowledge, understanding, comfort is where we find the next learning, the next experiment
- Sarah distinguishes between the discomfort of Wrong Direction! and the discomfort of Something New through intuition
…her tools include:
- Community for the external processing including networking
- Writing
- Spending time in the past, even if it slips into rumination, including with the legacy of her ancestors
- A light touch on the future, holding onto what’s most important to her
- An expansive definition of grief
- Surrounding herself with people and ideas that are wildly diverse to create healthy adversity, focusing on having really great conversations rather than changing minds
…the non-profit she chose to highlight was:
The National Home Funeral Alliance. They support people in creating funerals and buriers that are more personal, intimate, ecologically-sound, and financially accessible where legal.