Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Tyja Pierce. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Tyja, thanks for joining us today. Was there a moment in your career that meaningfully altered your trajectory? If so, we’d love to hear the backstory.

I believe the defining moment in my coaching career would be the moment I had a client who previously completed my program, reach out and ask me to provide my coaching services to her mother. When I first started coaching, I offered a free pilot program to five individuals and my only requirement was for them to provide a honest review and feedback for me to review my program before accepting paying clients. She came to me and basically said that her mother could see the improvements she was making with me as her coach and she was ready to do her own healing work. It was at that moment that I knew the program worked and it was ready.

Tyja, 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?

My name is Tyja aka Coach Ty, The Compassionate Coach. I am a certified life coach who’s niche is grief and trauma recovery. I help clients unpack and heal their traumas and/or grief by providing them support and the necessary tools to navigate their grief and healing journey. As someone who has had to navigate certain childhood traumas that carried into adulthood, I relate to my clients on a personal level and show them that they too can heal. In addition to childhood traumas, I loss my grandmother on September 25th of 2014 and while still trying to process and navigate the grief that comes with losing someone so instrumental in my life, I loss my mother to her battle with breast cancer 18 short months later, March 25th of 2016. Experiencing such great losses back to back was extremely painful and heartbreaking for me but I knew I had to figure out a way to grieve that wasn’t detrimental to myself. I went through therapy and began doing my own healing work and I came out on the other side so much better. I am proof to my clients that although they may experience or have experienced great losses or traumas, they can recover.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

Growing up I would always hear “Time heals all wounds” when it came to experiencing some sort of emotional trauma or pain. This led me to believe that grief would one day just end. That is the furthest thing from the truth. I had to learn that grief is constant and that’s ok. The reason we continue to experience moments of grief surrounding losing a loved one or experiencing something traumatic is because we are learning how to navigate life without that part of us anymore. Imagine losing a leg due to a traumatic event like a car accident and thinking life as you knew it will continue. It’s not true. You would need to go through a series of physical therapy sessions and other appointments to learn how to walk again without the leg. You have to learn to do life differently. So it is with losing someone close to you. You have to learn to do life without them and you never stop grieving simply because life doesn’t stop after the funeral service. It has been nearly a decade since I’ve loss my mother and grandmother and I still experience moments of grief or sadness surrounding their absence. The difference is, those moments don’t consume me anymore. I have learned how to navigate those moments and how to recover when they happen. Time doesn’t heal all wounds. Time heals physical wounds. The emotional wounds will always been there, you just learn to properly dress them if and when they are reopened.

Do you think you’d choose a different profession or specialty if you were starting now?

Contact Info:

• Instagram: Thecompassionplace
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheCompassionPlace?mibextid=dGKdO6

Image Credits
Jerel Blowe Photography