Gwen Suesse
(pronounced “cease” – who knew?)
As a life coach, I help people clarify and articulate what they want most from life and figure out how to achieve it. Martha Beck’s model for coaching fits with my personal belief that we are born “whole,” that deep within each of us there is an “Essential Self,” a self with complete inner personal wisdom. Alas, along comes life, with circumstances, situations, pressures of socialization, etc., adding layer upon layer on top of that inner wisdom. The result is that sometimes we feel lost, directionless, and unable to access our inherent wisdom in order to discern our best course forward. Coaching – which never includes giving advice! – helps people peel away those layers so that they can rediscover their own truth. It is both powerful and empowering.
My life has been a “living laboratory” for life coaching. Along the way, I’ve experienced myriad detours, countless things I that never saw coming: unexpected twists, sublime serendipities, surprising circumstances, devastating disappointments, happy synchronicities, sundry humiliations, incredible generosities, gnarly predicaments, loss of people I love, and all manner of stubborn quandaries. In short, whatever you are experiencing, chances are I have experienced something similar.
Longing for peace and seeking better ways to cope with the vagaries of life led me to Martha Beck’s Life Coach Program. It has been a life-changing experience for me. I look forward to sharing her techniques and tools with you, so that you, too, can realize the possibility of living “your life … just better.”
To decide if I’m the match you’re looking for in a life coach, it may help if I tell you more of what led me to coaching. The “longing for peace” mentioned above refers to the time when I was trying to find my way forward after Jack, my beloved husband, died suddenly. My credentials show all manner of education, learning, experience in communication training, teaching, human resources, etc. etc. That said, none of those things were sufficient help when I was faced with paralyzing grief, and trying to learn to restructure my life. A counselor put it to me this way: “You’re an energetic, smart woman. Working hard has gotten you all kinds of places. The problem is, the tools you have in your toolbox aren’t the ones you need now.” Life and grief coaching techniques filled that gap. I rediscovered my inner truth, and learned to harness it in order to find a new way forward. Trial by fire, for sure – but the process hollowed me out to a place of knowing, a place of being able to help others, as well, by sharing those tools.
Professional Qualifications
- BA, Wagner College
- MAT, Harvard University
- Certified Martha Beck Life Coach
- Certification in Creative Grief Support (creativegriefstudio.com)
- Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® Qualification/Advanced Applications/Teambuilding (Otto Kroeger Associates)
- Steering by Starlight Workshop Facilitator
- Published Author of Award-Winning Book, Womansong: Balance and Harmony in a Feminine Key