I’m Tanya, a qualified life coach based on the Gold Coast.
I found my career niche in bookkeeping because I’m efficient and organised - and I always loved the problem-solving aspect of it.
What I love more is coaching, teaching and mentoring women to achieve balance and fulfilment in their lives which, unsurprisingly, requires the same efficiency, attention to detail and problem solving as bookkeeping.
I fell in love - at first sight - with my husband when we were 18 years old. We’ve been together for over thirty years and during that time (amongst many adventures and challenges) we brought three children into the world – two boys (now young men!) and a girl. There’s a 9 year age gap between my oldest son and youngest little lady, so we’ve been in the business of raising humans for awhile now.
At some point between becoming a wife and a mum, I absorbed the belief that I was single-handedly responsible for the happiness of my family. Worse? They picked up what I was putting out there – so they believed it too. I had no patience, no sense of self, no confidence and I felt burdened.
Making someone happy is an honourable but often fruitless pursuit. I love, honour and respect my family members but making each of them happy is not my one, big, responsibility. Nor is it yours.
I became an expert at masking how lonely, resentful and angry I felt in my self-appointed role as Chief Family Martyr. I expected my family to know how to make me happy, too. Heard of “Mum Guilt”? A guilt so specific they had to separate it from the everyday, stock-standard guilt? I had SO much of it. When I started to focus on myself, I received resistance from my family. Shit, I even received resistance from myself.
With the help of my own coach, I learnt how I needed to treat myself – and my family did too.
I claimed responsibility for my life. I went through a process of deep self-development and personal growth to rediscover who I was and who I wanted to be. Importantly, I developed skills for interacting more effectively with my husband and my kids so that I could still be the mother and wife that I wanted while honouring myself as an individual with her own hopes, dreams and desires.
We do not get an instruction manual for a happy life when we reach adulthood. We expect things to be natural, innate. But the reality is: they are not. I learned the hard way what it takes for a more fulfilling life. One where I am heard, my needs are honoured, my boundaries serve myself and my family, and my relationships with my closest loved ones are stronger and more authentic.
So that’s where I’m at. Loving, growing, evolving, wanting to share what worked for me with YOU.