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...

Hello, and welcome to my blog! I hope you find many things from this blog. I won’t be just writing about life with a disability, although my life IS colored by my disability experience. Yes, I am a vibrant amputee on wheels, the wife of stroke survivor, the daughter of a disabled veteran and a retired educator who deals with chronic pain and illness. Still, that’s not what I’m all about and I want you to see that about yourself as well. You are more than a person with a disability, chronic or mental illness diagnosis. You are more than a disabled veteran. You are more than the service provider, caregiver or loved one of any of these people. We are more than our various diagnoses and labels, right? So, while I will discuss advocacy tips, share motivational passages and ideas to keep you going, celebrate milestones in disability and mental healthy advocacy and lament how far we have still to go, I will also share my perspective on every day things in my world that I hope you’ll find educational, inspiring, thought-provoking, annoying to the point of action, and so much more. Would you like to link back to my blog or quote something in your articles and journals? Just ask first and attribute appropriately, please. Would you like to be a guest blogger or have me be a guest blogger on your blog? I’d love to! Let’s talk more about what you’re looking for. So, again I say welcome! And thank you for reading and sharing my posts so that others can experience what you have as I share with you my perspective, ideas and experiences living a life beyond...