Black female disabled veteran in camouflage uniform smiling and embracing her primary age son

Black woman softly smiling while embracing underarm, wooden crutches

Many people don’t pursue their greatest goals or highest potential because they believe there are too many barriers that will prevent them from becoming successful.  Whether the barriers are real or perceived is irrelevant. In fact, both can prevent us from moving forward. Everyone faces barriers and it is important that we acknowledge them, whether they be physical, emotional, personal, spiritual or otherwise. Once we are aware of them and understand how we feel about them we are freer to face them and better equipped to overcome them. My physical impairments often create additional barriers as I go through my day, but I press on because getting certain things done or experiencing certain things are important enough for me to rise beyond the challenges. What’s important enough for you to move beyond the barriers to get through? All of us have barriers as we go about each day, right? These can be practical barriers, financial barriers, emotional barriers or those created by the people around us in the attitudes they share with us. Yet, people with disabilities, and people living with disabling chronic illnesses, often share common qualities of resilience, determination and adaptability. And yes, we also have those days where we just don’t want to try. It’s part of being human. Believe me, I know this to be true as a survivor of birth with spina bifida with depression and limb loss. Still, I press forward. Each movement may tire me, but I know I’ll be further along in my journey if I just take one movement. The barriers you face may be personal to you, but it is vital that you create ways to move forward, to better understand and overcome them if you are serious about achieving your goals. We all face pain, suffering, stress and other difficulties. Many of us with disabilities and chronic illnesses experience these more frequently, or maybe just differently depending, than the average. At times of stress and difficulty we tend to think that life would be much simpler without these hassles, or that we’ve cornered the market on our own self doubt. , but these moments of difficulties also provide us with added opportunities to build new skills and offer us another chance for growth. Adversity is unavoidable, so why fight it? Whatever we’ve been brought to, we can get through. Accept that life has its challenges and develop ways to cope that work for you. Try this: don’t linger too long on past difficulties, but focus on how you got through them and make a list. And, don’t go looking for future difficulties to make life harder for you. Why do that? The current barriers, whether you have a...

Career coaching – you’ve read about it, maybe heard or read interviews about career coaches. Now you are a high school or college graduate with a disability and wondering, “Should I get one to help me find work?”  It’s entirely possible that a career coach like me is just the thing you need to jumpstart your job search if you have a disability. If you feel like your career has slowed like pouring molasses — or failed to get started at all because you just graduated, a career coach can help you identify all the obstacles that may hamper your job search and help you brainstorm a game plan to overcome these obstacles. Or if you have a specific workplace issue such as wanting to move up in your company or change your focus in your career, a career coach benefits you by understanding all the layers of that workplace issue you’re facing and helps you to explore and/or try out potential solutions. If you have a specific career weakness, such as poor communication skills, difficulty negotiating, or you don’t do well with presentations, a career coach can guide you through steps to sharpen those areas quickly and effectively for your benefit. A career coach can also be focused on helping you with a particular event, like an interview, career fair or salary negotiation discussion with the boss. A career coach can prepare you to manage these things with a confident strategy that has higher chances of a favorable outcome. You might be wondering about all the different kinds of coaches: career coaches, business coaches and executive coaches. Basically, a career coach focuses on individuals at either early stages of their career such as a new graduate in the workforce, and helps you focus “growing” your job-readiness in the right direction. Or, maybe you are at a crossroads trying to manage a change, opportunity, or threat of job loss successfully. A business coach tends to focus on helping small business owners grow their businesses (rather than their careers). If you have more of an entrepreneurial spirit and want to work from home or simply be your own boss, a business coach can lead you through the process of creating a business plan, marketing, connecting with the right business idea and customer base, plus more. An executive coach generally works with individuals at high levels in Corporate America, such as a chief executive officer or vice president of a company. Even the higher-ups, who are sharp in many professional areas, can have weaknesses that need to be tweaked to impact a better job performance and their success as an effective leader. Some will do well using a career coach, others may find it...

A dear coaching mentor, Wendy Y. Bailey came into town  to present to our professional coaching organization, ICF Charlotte Chapter, and her presentation and presence has inspired me to deeper clarity and more questions about what I do. I’ve tweaked and cemented my coaching brand, thanks to her example, as well as the mentoring and coaching program I participated in with Coach Bill Baren. And I’m very happy with The Life Beyond Limits Coach® path I’m on now as a result of Bill’s Client Mastery Blueprint Program. Still, something just hasn’t felt quite right in various exercises and seminars I’ve done to perfect my niche in disability life and career coaching. Something’s been sorely missing and I’m still dragging around some ideals that are shooting me in the proverbial foot professionally. Yes, I want to coach people with disabilities – first, last and always. But which sub-niche or population? There are, after all, over 75 million people with disabilities worldwide and I can’t coach them all. (Or can I? *evil cackles*) Do I want to coach veterans coming home with disabling injuries? Do I want to coach ‘tweens’ and teens with disabilities? Or do I want to focus on women? I’d love to coach any number of folks with disabilities, yes, and they are all welcome at my door, but I have to be clear with myself if I am going to really attract and be a sharp coach to a particular group of people with disabilities that rings the bell in my soul. After a satisfying dinner, Coach Wendy asked me, “So, what’s her name? What’s she like?” Wendy quickly searched for a pen and a scrap of paper to begin writing, waiting for me to answer. “What’s she do for a living?” I at first looked at Wendy like Scooby-Doo perplexed by a cartoon apparition and gave her my version of Scooby’s “Do huh?” yelp. We shared a giggle and backed up. She then asked more clearly, “Who do you feel most drawn to coach, Monica?” Let’s do a quick profile of that person with a disability, she invited. It didn’t have to be perfect or complete right that minute, but on the back of an envelope, words and phrases began to draw a picture in my mind. Wendy asked me again, “What’s her name?” “Christina,” I said with a slight beam, once I got the name in my head. It took me a beat to think. The name comes from one of my favorite, if not my most favorite, painting, “Christina’s World” by Andrew Wyeth. Many art critics describe the painting as melancholy and depressing, but I see so much hope in that scene where Christina, the actual woman...