I have an ask.

I'm currently in Portugal, where I've returned for the past three years to do some special and important work. In Portuguese there's a word, saudade — a longing for someone or something you still love, although it's gone or changed. That word aptly describes what I was experiencing, although without knowing it, the first time I came here.

At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, I was diagnosed with a chronic, degenerative condition. The gravity of this diagnosis didn't hit all at once. I didn't appear changed, but there were changes — those evergreen changes, a little at a time, unpredictable and with no clear before-and-after — the messy middle. This is known as ambiguous loss. It's grieving something, and/or even someone who's still here, just not as they once were. And there's no preparation, no plan, no ritual for that kind of grief.

These yearly trips to Portugal are where I've done the most research and reflection trying to understand my experience, and the depth and breadth of the kind of grief that accompanies change. That growing understanding has become the foundation of my coaching practice expansion: supporting people to move through the grief that shows up as we become someone new, whether we chose that becoming or not.

This is the next chapter of a decade of professional personal growth work I've been doing at TAC Coaching and Consulting. I am adding Ambiguous Loss coaching as a specific offering, in a workshop and coaching series I'm calling The Bittersweet Business of Becoming.

I'm currently raising runway funds for:

If a monetary gift isn't in the cards, sharing this with someone who might need me one day means just as much.

Thanks for being an integral part of this iteration of my becoming.

Tameka