Today we’d like to introduce you to Jennifer Grasseschi.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Jennifer. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I’ve been captivated by creativity for as long as I can remember. Even as a little girl, I would color incessantly in coloring books and obsess over my favorite songs on the radio. Growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area, I started playing the clarinet in the school band in fourth grade and was totally hooked. From there, I went on to play flute and saxophone, I sang in all the choirs, and often I played leading roles in school plays. Upon graduation from high school, I was given the top award at my school for Fine Arts and hoped to go to college and major in Music.
But sometimes life offers us an unexpected path. Through the influence of certain people in my life, I had come to accept that a career in music was a dead-end road that would lead to nothing but an ineffectual bank account. “By all means, go to college,” they said. “But don’t major in Music. Major in Business.”
Certainly, they meant well. But the thought of studying Business felt like torture to me, so I entered into the workforce instead. For many years I worked at whatever jobs I qualified for. I learned some things; it paid the bills. But the artist in me was longing for expression.
Now and then, I would dabble a little in music, but my confidence had faltered and I began to struggle with crippling stage fright. In my desperation to express myself artistically, I occasionally turned to other forms of art – such as photography, in which I found some success – but music always held a deeper place in my heart.
In 1993 I married a musician (go figure) and we made our home in San Luis Obispo, California. Before long, we had a couple of kids and when they were small, I made the decision to home-educate them. I was able to provide my children with a very rich education, one that allowed plenty of time for extra-curricular activities such as music, and both children became accomplished musicians.
But my music was always plaintively waiting in the wings, seemingly just out of reach. When I would occasionally come to terms with the loss of it, I’d descend into bouts of depression, so keen was the loss. After my kids grew up and made their ways into the world, I hit bottom. My work as a mother and home educator had come to an end, I had developed a persistent chronic illness, and I struggled desperately with feelings of loneliness, worthlessness, and the deep sadness of having let the music get away from me. I knew I was stuck, but I didn’t know how to get unstuck.
One day, at a particularly low point, I realized I was steeped in self-loathing. This seemed to me, even in that compromised state of mind, to be utterly unacceptable. So I opened my laptop and typed the words “how to love yourself” into the search engine. That was the most pathetic yet brilliant thing I’ve ever done because that’s how I discovered life coaching. The rest, as they say, is history. I signed up for a rigorous six-month life coaching program with a feisty, hilarious, certified master life coach from New York by the name of Kara Loewentheil. Kara taught me all about my brain and how it works. I learned about how my limiting, self-critical thoughts had been destroying my life without me even realizing it. I learned how to take responsibility for my mental and emotional wellness and how to shift my thinking in order to get the results I wanted in life. By the end of six months, I was a completely different person. After an additional three months working with artist and master life coach Leah Badertscher, I was ready to address the fears I had let rule me for over a decade.
Equipped with these powerful cognitive tools, I faced my stage fright head-on, learned how to process it, and began performing publicly again – and enjoying it! Original songs were again welling up, and this time I had the confidence to not only write them down but also to allow myself to dream of a future recording project. The people around me were astonished and began asking me to teach them about what I had learned, which eventually led to my decision to become a life coach.
In order to take my coaching to the next level, I enrolled in the prestigious certification program at The Life Coach School based in Dallas, Texas. Additionally, I founded Phoenix Arts, a dynamic and growing project committed to supporting emerging and collaborative efforts within the arts. I went on to write, design, and co-publish, along with my good friend N. J. Heywood, a fine art book of poetry and photography entitled ELEMENTS www.elementsthebook.com. N. J. and I donate 10% of the book’s proceeds to The City of Joy, a transformational leadership community for women survivors of violence in The Congo.
I’ve also recently teamed up with San Luis Obispo mixed media artist Holly Beals on an exciting visual arts project combining my photography and her incomparable work, with an upcoming show slated for early 2021. And there are many more projects on the horizon. Thanks to the life coaching concepts and skills I’ve learned, I can confidently say that my future as a creative force in this world has never been brighter, and I am committed to teaching others how to manage their most powerful asset – their own brains.
We’d love to hear more about your work.
I firmly believe that every person on this planet is a creator of something. We may not all be artists, per se, but we have all built sand castles or mud pies or small businesses or belief systems or unique ways of life. My coaching clients range from budding creatives to established artists in their field to people who just want to create something new in their life. And my passion – indeed, my calling – is to help people find a clear path towards confidently engaging in a ‘creative way of being’ that not only moves them forward in life but also allows for their unique essences to be expressed and shared with the world – a world that craves the powerful and inspiring force of creativity.
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
I don’t believe in regrets; every choice I have made has led me to where I am right now and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Having said that, sometimes, I do wonder how life might be different for me today if I had learned the life coaching skills decades ago!
Contact Info:
- Address: Jennifer Grasseschi Life Coaching
1026 Chorro Street, Suite 230
San Luis Obispo, CA 93401 - Website: www.jennifergrasseschi.com
- Email: jennifer@jennifergrasseschi.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jennifergrasseschi_lifecoach/
- Other: Photography Instagram Account: https://www.instagram.com/jennygrasseschi/
Image Credit:
Corla Schöner, David Pascolla, Jennifer Grasseschi
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