Hi {{ first_name | friend }},
I’m handing these letters to some of the people I’ve worked with. Today’s story is the first I’m sharing from a group program: how a room of people comes together over six Sundays.
I want you to meet Debbie. She joined Return to Yourself, my six-session summer series at the Quogue Field Club. Afterward, she sat down with me to tell me, in her own words, what those Sundays were like.
Last summer, Debbie came to one of my sessions with her daughter. This summer, she came back for Return to Yourself. The work aligns, she told me, with a lot of her belief systems: “health and wellbeing, having a good balance of mind, body, soul.” She looks for the same things in her own spiritual practice, “such as acceptance of spirit, self, forgiveness of yourself and others.”
For her, caring for the mind and the body means “making sure that both are aligned,” which “isn’t always the case.”
“Sometimes we push our bodies harder than we push our souls and our spirit.”
She wanted to slow down, to meditate, and to reflect first thing in the morning instead of heading out on a bike ride or a long walk. She also came in wanting to understand one word: grace.
“Grace is a very, very big word.”
Its roots, she said, “come from a very distant past.” Understanding it was the challenge: “I don’t know if I was having a hard time with it, but it was definitely something I was working, I’ve been working through.”
We have talked about grace especially in the context of her role as a caregiver and the ways she is “just learning how to be” with the responsibilities and choices that come with it.
She chose the series because of me and because she believes “intergenerational relationships are really, really important.” Her kids are around my age. As time passes, in her words, “the differences between us shrink.”
A Nugget of Truth
One part of the experience stayed with her: the times people opened up, with one another or with the whole group. She finds “it’s very helpful to listen to other people’s stories.” She sees the series as “a good foundation for creating trust and community.” Their circumstances can be very different from hers, and for her that is fine: “we have to sort of dilute the differences between us.”
“They might hold what I like to call a nugget of truth, for ourselves.”
The six sessions felt “almost too short” to her.
“I did not expect the pleasant coalescence of the group.”
She noticed a flow forming, where people “started to sort of appreciate seeing one another in the class.”
I felt it too: around halfway through, we had a cohort, a cohesive group coming together. People had gotten to know each other, and trust and safety had settled in over the first three sessions.
Slow Down the Pace
“It’s a wonderful opportunity to give yourself a little bit of time in the day where you slow down the pace.”
For her, focusing on the breath “helps really center oneself.” It makes space for “the rest of the day or the rest of the week.” The breath practice connected her to her head, her heart, and her gut, to “the rhythm of my body and where I get stuck.”
She would recommend the series “100%.” The guided breath came first for her, then the reflection writing, in the journal she brought most of the time, and then sharing with the other people in the group.
“I go to church every Sunday and in the summertime I go at 9 o’ clock in the morning instead of 10.” Our sessions started at 11, so for her the two experiences worked together, back to back.
At the end, I asked what someone new to my work should know about it. She talked about professionals who take the skills they’ve honed in one sector of life and carry them forward to the next.
“I believe in common threads in the different passages of our lives.”
“They might hold what I like to call a nugget of truth, for ourselves.”
This reflection comes from a real conversation. Debbie agreed to share her story so others in similar seasons could recognize themselves in it. Every coaching session is private and confidential.
Victoria Grandury
CEO & Founder, Limitless Rebel
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