Head Life Coach

Shawna DeGrange

The journey that brings me here to you today is one that began with an early awareness of the tenuousness of life. I grew up watching my parents run a small family ranch. Their hard work and integrity were impeccable, but they were also susceptible to verbalizing their stress in front of me when I was child. It was, therefore, quite early in my life that I learned of the pressures that life imposes and I began to be curious and eager to help the people I love retain happiness in the face of life’s obstacles. By the time I  was a teenager, I had lost both of my grandparents and had watched a close Aunt battle a brain tumor. These experiences climaxed when my mom was diagnosed with stage four colon cancer. At only 16, I became profoundly aware of my parent’s fragility, a transformative understanding. Her prognosis was grim, the chemo therapy inhumane, and my other family members barely able to cope themselves. I became, not for the last time, the person on whom responsibility fell to hold the family together. While my peers at school were dieting to fit into prom dresses, I was holding my mom’s hair back while she threw up uncontrollably. Along with the miraculous blessing of my mom’s survival, I gained a deep and abiding passion for learning how to fully enjoy life while still having to live the reality of its sometimes harsh nature.

These are the origins of my drive to understand how to endure life’s inevitable hardships, while trying to maintain gratitude, love, and compassion. Life would continue to bat away at me: from a near death experience in an accident which left me crippled for years with agoraphobia to the decimation of our family ranch in the 2017 California wildfires (while I was two months pregnant, no less), I return time and time again in the worst of times to those same lessons I learned so young. Along the path of pursuing my own set of skills for life, a new passion emerged. The more time and energy I invested in bettering my own life, the more able I was to share that knowledge with the people around me. I had earned a BA in early childhood development, taken over the family ranch and summer camp business, and started a non-profit. I had earned recognition from the community with the Spirit of Sonoma award in 2015, and had joined the local chamber of commerce, and mentored with the organization Girls on the Run. In each pursuit I found that the wellspring of joy for me came from the opportunities I had to meet people and hear their stories. Time and again I felt drawn to the personal conversations and I wanted to dig deeper with people, help them find joy and strength, share in their battles. It was this yearning that led me to life coaching.

It is common for us to approach life from a place of waiting. Waiting for it to get better, easier, or fairer. The truth is that life will not get better, easier, or fairer. But it doesn’t have to, for you to be able to live better. Psychologist Angela Duckworth, in studying the qualities that lead to success, found that it was a, “combination of passion and perseverance that made high achievers special. In a word, they had grit.” This will be the focus of our work together. I cannot make life easier, and neither can you. But together we will explore your capacity for grit. You have it in greater amount than you know. Together we will work with intention and direction to help you hone your skills at living. We all wish that life came with a manual, but since it doesn’t we must make our own. And like any person training a new skill, you may need a coach to get you started on your way. I want to be that coach for you.

I don’t come to you from a place of perfection. Life is messy and I am here to help.