We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Cherie Monlezun. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Cherie below.
Cherie, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.
“On belay!” “Belay on.” “Climbing!” “Climb on.” Have YOU ever said these words? They are the communication between a climber and the person holding the other end of their rope. They are a powerful proclamation and a poignant commitment. They are something like, “I’m about to take a bold risk” and “I’ve got you!”
The first time I was introduced to a ropes course was at a psychiatric hospital where I was working back in 1992 (A ropes course is a combination of low and high challenge elements used for personal and group development.) Since then, I’ve worked on many ropes courses, brought students and clients rock climbing, backpacking, white water rafting and canoeing. No matter the wilderness or outdoor setting, I have never NOT been blown away by what happens when I get to witness people finding their own courage and capacity. My own journey of challenges, struggles and successes as I climbed, traversed and paddled, have become integral to who I am and how I navigate my whole world. These opportunities have taught me about how to be centered when things feel unsteady, vulnerable when I need help, willing to risk what is unknown because I believe in what lies within.
In my professional life, I have been on both sides of the rope, literally and figuratively. I’ve been the climber, and the belayer, the student and the teacher, the massage therapist and the receiver, the life coach and the coached. I call upon the well-spring of experiences that live within my cells to do the work I do and hopefully enrich the lives that I touch.
It is in my personal life, however, that I have been eternally grateful for knowing what grit and grace feel like and how to summon them when needed. I had a 15 year fertility journey with just about every nook and cranny one might have in there….the proverbial long and winding road. Grief rode along in the passenger seat for many, many years, but so did hope. Not for one moment, in all that time, with each setback, loss or endless waiting, did I have a single doubt that there was a person waiting for me to do any and everything necessary to bring them into form. I knew.
Some of that loss came in the form of husbands – 2 of them, who chose different paths for themselves. I honor their choices. I also had to honor my own inner-wisdom and the pull I kept feeling from my unborn daughter. Although I would embark on my parenting journey solo, I knew I would not be alone, for my relationships with family and friends are deep and wide and I could count on their support and love. I had taken many leaps of faith in my life and it was time for me to jump again. It was not easy…no fertility journey is. Calming the terror that arises in all of the waiting for bloodwork, ultrasounds, and heartbeats, each and every time, is a particular kind of test. Every ounce of nausea is a blessing of cautious optimism that everything is progressing just as it’s supposed to. The hope and the fear, the attachment and the non-attachment, the trying and the surrendering were tenderly held by my inhales and exhales.
And then she came.
Cherie, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I am the child of two social worker parents. I grew up fascinated by the people walking in and out of their private practice office where I would go every day after school. Funny thing though, one day when I was in grad school, my dad and I were talking and he said that even if they had been accountants he believed I would be doing this work. I find that hard to believe.
My undergraduate degree is in psychology and my master’s degree is in expressive arts therapy. I went from “so tell me how that makes you feel” to “show me how that makes you feel.” After a few years in the field, I became curious, “yeah, but how do you feel, in your body? How do you process your world in your cells?” That’s when I went to massage therapy school. My work has always been integrated, blending our ways of understanding ourselves and our lives through our bodies, brains, hearts and souls.
In 2017, after 25 years of doing some combination of this work, in various forms, I was ready to add another way of supporting my daughter and I. I wasn’t interested in changing careers, but I needed something that could draw upon my years of experience and expertise to enhance my intellect and income. Transform Coaching Academy, led by Dr. Eve Agee, became the resource and inspiration needed to propel me once again. I added life coaching to my toolbox, where the tools felt right at home.
I had been the co-owner of a therapeutic health spa, including massage therapy, acupuncture and skin care for over 10 years when two things collided: COVID and our lease renewal. It was November of 2020 when we needed to make the hard but right decision to close our beloved Blue Creek Spa. When one door closes, as they say, I transitioned to my home office where I continue to do massage therapy, life coaching and walk my daughter to and from school every day. It is a great privilege to witness and facilitate experiences for people whereby they can bask in their own light, find what they are seeking and forge courageously ahead in the direction of their wildest dreams.
Have you ever had to pivot?
Way back in 1990, I gave my dad his 1st journal with the gentle nudging of “hey, maybe you start writing, like, a book or something!” He’s always been my favorite writer and storyteller and I spent the next few decades hoping to get him to, at the very least, record all of our family lineage along with tales of their lives, my dad and mom’s and even mine. Over the years, I gave a few more journals and a lot more nudges but it was the just-right inspiration of his unborn grandchild and yet another blank journal gift, on Father’s day of 2015, for good measure, that finally did the trick. He wrote for a few years, made a bunch of copies for family and received loads of encouragement and gratitude from many folks, but I had yet another request.
Despite having written the book for very few people to ever read, I figured that he’d spent his career helping other folks navigate their journeys based on his own lifetime of collecting lessons and wisdom from family, friendships, hardships and harmonies, all along the way. So, in November of 2020, when we decided to close Blue Creek, I finally had the freed-up mental and emotional space to embark on an editorial adventure. For the next year, while my mom and daughter played together, my dad and I sat side by side, pouring ourselves into the labor of love of transforming all of those journals into a published memoir. I am certain that it was one of the great privileges of my life. I am also certain that this book has tenderly touched the lives of a whole lot of other folks too. I do love when sweet dreams come true.
Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?
I think the process of “becoming” ourselves, who we are and who we strive to be is a gift that not all of us get. I am named after my aunt, my dad’s sister, who drowned when she was 6, with her older brother, Alvin, who was 10. I was born 6 years after their death and my parents wanted to honor her but not burden me with the impossible mission to live my life for both of us, so I got her name as my first, Veronica. I go by my middle name, Cherie, after my great-grandmother. It was her French granny nickname because she was darling and dear. She lost her husband to the Spanish flu in 1919 while she was pregnant with my grandmother. She, too, was a solo mom. I have tried to live a life that honors them both.
My mom’s maiden name is LeBleu. Her nickname was Bleu, which now is my daughter’s middle name. The original working title of my dad’s book was “Rhapsody for Bleu,” which I thought was clever and charming but the Gershwin estate may have something to say about it. I suggested we not overthink it but that another title would come to us. One day it came, clear as a bell to me. I called my dad and said, “Pop, listen, I think I got it. You know how I asked you to write a book about how you became the person you are as an offering to your granddaughter, as she becomes the person she is? Well…since you both share a name, what if we call the book Becoming Charlie?!” And that was it!
How does the life we live happen to and for us? How do we take what comes and use it to shape us? How can we learn from how others have done it? How do we alchemize lead into gold? How do we weave our life’s fibers into a splendid tapestry? I believe that largely, how we do anything is how we do everything. Be it in our work, our homes, our communities large and small, who will we be and how will we share of ourselves? Maybe this whole thing is a little bit less about what we do and a little more about who we are. Becoming Charlie is the book that has most influenced my own becoming – who I am as a person, professional, parent, and partner. And I will spend the rest of my days, exploring and expanding, not perfectly but purposeful, trusting my rope.
“On belay!”
Contact Info:
- Website: www.cheriemonlezun.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cheriemonlezun/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cherie.monlezun/
- Other: www.monlezunbooks.com https://www.audible.com/pd/Becoming-Charlie-Audiobook/B0BV17DL8Z?action_code=ASSGB149080119000H&share_location=pdp