Nerissa Nields-Duffy

Life Composition: Coaching for Readers and Writers.

I gear my life coaching towards "readers and writers," although you don't need to be an actual writer, (or even a reader) to benefit. I believe that our stories are what make us sick AND our stories are what heal us. That art has the power to heal, that reading has the power to heal. One of my clients learned more from a performance of the play Wit (about living in your heart rather than your head) than she did from years of therapy. Another client uses the novels of Wallace Stevens to keep her marriage healthy and communicative. For myself, I learned about faith and bitterness from Bob Dylan, about joy from the early Beatles, about family from King Lear and Anna Karenina. So, in the course of our work together, I might assign the client a re-reading of his or her favorite novel, poem or play as a jumping off place.

"If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you."-Gospel of Thomas, 70.

As such, I might also suggest you write a story, a song, a poem about your experience. When the story exists on paper, outside of ourselves, a clear projection rather than a spooling internal narrative, we can see it for what it is: a story, rather than our destiny.

While I was in training to be a life coach, I kept wondering, "Why am I doing this? This is so different from my work as a musician and a writer!" And I stewed and fretted and wondered if I would become distracted and lose my "art" and get too busy to do what I REALLY love which is write and sing. But (AHA!) I had an epiphany (my favorite thing! I eat them for breakfast!) and realized that my whole life is about stories. It's about getting them out of me, in word and song, so that they no longer rule me. In life coaching, I do the same thing: I help the client to see that the story is just a story: not good or bad, but believing it makes it much more powerful than it really is.