I have been doing formal life coaching since 2004, and have completed life coach training and certification through the Coaches Training Institute. For me, this work grew out of my nonprofit management work, my organizational development consulting, and the work I have done over the years to move through my own major transitions. For more on my organizational development work, click here. Without delving too deeply, I will say a little about my personal transitions to give you a sense of my experience base as a person.
Personal Transitions
I have worked my way, in the last 20 years, through two major career shifts, two cross country moves, becoming a wife and a step-parent to two young children, 10 years later losing that primary relationship and figuring out how to stay a good and supportive part of my step-daughters’ lives, five years of chronic and hard to diagnose illness, the beginnings of a marvelous second marriage, and the building of a consulting practice
All of these experiences have invited me to become stronger, more compassionate, and more open. They have given me a much deeper understanding of myself, of the value of living with uncertainty, of the ways in which grief and change can give us gifts we need if we pay attention, and of how healing and joy can come as we learn to be more clearly ourselves.
"Thank you Tasha for walking through this journey with me."
Terri Welsh, Portland OR
My health/healing processes, which have been rooted in acupuncture, other naturopathic approaches and yoga, have also taught me a great deal about patience, about digging deep, about the connections between seemingly unconnected things, and about trusting my instincts and those of the people with whom I am engaged in healing (or other creative) work. I continue to learn in this process of healing and living more healthfully.
Music and Writing
I am a musician and a poet. For me, both music and creative writing are as much about community as they are about individual creative expression. I have been part of many types of musical groups – duos, bands, choirs – and all have taught me to trust the process of making music and to be joyful in that process. They have also allowed me to keep being a beginner – a critical lesson for someone like me who prefers to “know what I’m doing” at all times unless I am consciously attuned to that beginner state. (I have, in the last four years, started playing in new tunings on the guitar, taken up the bodhran, done more songwriting than I’ve done in all the rest of the years of my life, and begun to consider learning Swedish so I can sing some Nordic music that my band loves.)
Writing has been a critical tool in my self-reflection process throughout my life, and has also become a major creative focus in the past few years. I am a facilitator of writing groups with Write Around Portland, a nonprofit that nurtures writing, respect and community by creating writing groups for people normally excluded from our society – low-income people, people with disabilities, people living in prison, people with HIV/AIDS, etc. That experience, and writing in community in my own group and in workshops, has taught me the value of writing together with others and the power of inviting people to find and share their unique voices.
