LIFE LESSONS FROM WEST AFRICA

[Cezarina Trone]

Why I Chose to Be a Life Coach

By Cezarina Trone

www.cezarinatrone.com

Her raspy voice put one’s ear to the test, especially mine as my French language skills could have used more polishing those days. Every time Miriam spoke, I was given the choice to slow down the whole rhythmic dance of life, to allow my whole being-ness to rearrange itself to the sound of each of her words. The essence of ‘me’ knew her essence from a deep place of unspoken wonders. With a Nigerien father and a Russian mother, this young woman of twenty-four had borrowed African and European qualities of being that captured my heart in awe of marvelous divine creation expressing itself though human gestures seemingly inadequate and strange to others. Miriam had a car accident a few years back and her best friend died on the spot. She was flown from Niger, West Africa to France and kept in a hospital for two years in deep comma. When she woke up, she was very angry at life itself. I was told her story in passing one day during the Fall of 2009 while her mother approached me to do some life coaching with Miriam. My first reaction was against it, as I tried to explain I was not a therapist, but this feeling vanished when I first met my muse. She walked towards me with a great limp, hugged me and did the French kissing thing where one kisses the other three times on alternate cheeks. When I first looked at her, I could see nothing wrong. Everyone had mentioned all the physical handicaps, and I could tell she spoke at a slower pace, but my whole being read hers as the expression of beautiful magnificent love captured inside a body which had to be put back together (in one of our yoga sessions, Miriam shared that she carried pieces of metal in her hips and that is why she could not bend her legs for some of the postures).

Through our eight months’ coaching journey, Miriam has taken me into a wondrous place of re-arranging my understanding of Self. Each moment I was away from her, I could feel how my heart energy would simply take off and wrap around her being-ness wherever she was to hold her up in a place of illuminated transformation. Each week we held simple conversations in my broken French, used EFT to tap into more joy in life and release stuck anger, we played with vision boards and soaked our hearts together in the deep waters of unconditional love. All I could do was seeing her nonstop as a magnificent divine being who had chosen that particular experience there and then. To get her even more involved with life, I asked for help in my classroom twice a week. She fell in love with my K-1 children and amazed me with her patience and desire to serve. ‘Cezarina, what is going to happen with me when you leave in June 2010?’ she asked me repeatedly after I had mentioned that was my last year in Niger. ‘You will be just fine, Miriam, you’ll see…’ I replied lightheartedly. The winter vacation came and we parted for a while in our different worlds of human experiences. Miriam went to NY with family to visit her brother’s new baby and we reunited a couple of weeks later. After her return I noticed how her body movements had changed, her inner joy had increased and our energetic dance had shifted in more effortless ways.

It was around Valentine’s Day 2010 when a special gift came to me unexpectedly. It was a gift carrying with it a different kind of love story where one’s Self keeps falling in love with itself in the other person over and over again until tears start flowing… Miriam sat on the couch in my living room that afternoon and spoke about life with a sense of deep wisdom that was fascinating. ‘There is a man in a different country and he wants to marry me…he is older and has a child from a previous marriage. I told him I do not love him now but one day I will love him. Do you think he is the one, Cezarina? I am looking at this body and its frailty and I know I want a child of my own so I need to do something soon…’

I was speechless. I felt a sudden rush of energy through my whole being and Miriam’s words stayed with me all evening even as I visited a small African market in town to buy my fruits and vegetables. As my hands washed the food and as I felt engaged with all my senses in the creative act of cooking, Miriam’s words washed over me once again. All I could feel was the powerful surge of creative life force within her wanting to come forth as expression of human potential though birthing something new in the world, in this case she was offering up her body as an instrument for magnificent co-creation. I connected with that amazing force within me and her, with living consciousness itself… the tears that wanted to flow down the stream of this heart’s river banks were like holy waters washing away any remaining sense of limitation in any young woman’s being anywhere in this world.

I have returned to Cincinnati a few weeks ago after living in Niger, West Africa for three years. It was there that I found my calling as a life coach while teaching children in an international school. The passion was so strong that I went through a long certification program, met wonderful people from all over the world and learned to appreciate our global heart connection. Just the other day I received an email from Miriam and at the bottom of her message, she wrote: “Cezarina, I miss you. Thank you for given me some happiness in my life.I Love you! “

These words reminded me once again why I chose to be a visionary life coach and play in the fields of wellness, wellbeing, self-expression and creativity. I silently sent off my response to Miriam via my heart’s light waves, ‘I love you, too. Thank you for being in my life.’ (June 2010)