It was Nurse McGowan in her white leather shoes who was the first to say: “A shoemaker’s daughter without shoes,” following my breast exam during period 2 in her basement office at Wildwood Catholic High.
During the exam, she informed me that my breast tissue was all the way into my arm pits. I thought about apologizing, but instead remained silently chastised.
When Nurse McGowan checked my eyes, she found me needing glasses; and when she checked my lungs, she discovered a touch of bronchitis.
“A shoemaker’s daughter’s without shoes!” she scolded, scribbling notes onto my chart from her circular silver swivel stool.
I assumed Nurse McGowan’s use of the shoe analogy had something to do with the fact that my father was a physician. Over the years, I had discovered that people took pleasure in finding ways that our health had been neglected.
It is the same pleasure that we all find in discovering a contractor’s home unfinished or a teacher’s child unruly or a writer’s work misspeled.
Though it once perplexed me, Nurse McGowan’s comment has come full circle, as I find that despite the fact that I am a life coach, my own life has grown unwieldy.
Despite the fact that I carefully tend the goals of my clients, I’ve allowed the garden of my own desires to become overgrown with half-met reaches and focus-less passions.
Ironically, I hear myself thinking… “I need a life coach.”
And so I schedule an appointment for myself–with myself–several in fact–spanning an entire week. This is how long it takes to weed the garden of my life so that I can remember what I was trying to grow in the first place.
Instead of frantically planting more seeds to satisfy my angst, I pause to create more space around each of the plants that have already taken root. This renewed perspective, allows me to determine which flowers need pruning and which I want to fertilize.
With the help of a life coach, I create containers around each of these desires so that I can frame the actions vital to MY growth.
“A shoemaker’s daughter without shoes,” indeed. But no longer. I have reached down and tended to ME.
Two Owls Calling 
Wow! This is a brilliant and beautiful post. I think that maybe we all need life coaches, people who leap in to remind us that our own projects and hopes and dreams merit attention as much as all the other obligations that fill our days.
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