I’m Colette Wrigglesworth - someone who has long been supporting women who feel stuck, to free themselves. And be themselves.
I’m a coach. But I only realised it fairly recently.
Let me explain...
chime of wrens
coaching
I’ve always had a deep love of and fascination for nature: how it works, how we work with it and how we are all shaped by it. So I was naturally drawn to studying zoology and animal behaviour. So much so, I’ve got a PhD in it.
But I was raised by women with a strong drive to ‘do’. To support. To help. Not surprising, then, that - much as I loved investigating the theory around things - I all too often found myself asking, ‘So what? How do I actually make a difference here?’ So I took my learning into the civil service, and spent the next 20+ years developing environment-saving policies.
It was here that I had the pleasure of leading teams that included amazing, inspiring women. Women that seemingly had no end to their ability to ‘do’ - raise children, care for parents, care for partners - all while carving out careers for themselves and being brilliant at their jobs. And yet, so few of them saw this as out of the ordinary. They just ‘did’.
I was continually surprised when, during conversations, these fabulous women would tell me: “I can’t do that”, “I don’t have the skills”, “I’m not good enough/clever enough/ready enough”.
I found myself having more and more conversations with these women where I held up a virtual mirror for them, and asked them to see what I saw. And when they did, it was awesome. In every sense of the word. And it was life-changing. For them - and for me. Because I realised that I wanted to do this, to do more of this. I wanted to make this kind of difference for more women.
It turns out that ‘this’ had a name, and it was ‘coaching’. So, being someone who loves getting a certificate, too, I qualified as a coach.
And that’s why I’m here. I am a middle-aged woman who has spent so much time asking other women: “What’s stopping you? What’s holding you back from just doing it?” (the most common answer, by the way, when you really dig deep, is - almost always - “Nothing”).
So - I’m doing it.
I support women who feel stuck, to free themselves
and be themselves.
I provide safe, supportive spaces and time for women to think, talk, hear and be heard - with no judgement.
I encourage women to reflect, remember and reconnect with themselves and with what’s most important to them.
To find what makes their heart sing.
And why ‘chime of wrens’? I’ve always been fascinated by these birds. The way they are several things, all at once: one minute - so mouse-like and stealthily silent, the next minute - soaring in the air, and creating the most complicated, beautiful, fearless sound. From such a tiny body. These qualities are why wrens have been revered for millenia by ancient cultures around the world. Just a little brown bird to some. But an amazing, magical creature to others.
Just like the women I work with every day.
