I started out wanting to help people speak English clearly so they can be understood. I dived into the sector, obtained CELTA and I have been a language instructor since 2008. In recent years, I have also taken on clients whose children require extra tuition in English skills.
In all situations, I monitor the level of confidence in my clients. I observe also the environment into which I am invited. For example, a mother and child relationship. I have a particular affinity towards families and individuals who find themselves pressured to ‘fit in’. This is because I never fitted in, I have come to terms with that and I am very happy in my own skin.
I grew up in a matriarchal family. I left home at 18, after falling out with my mother. When I started my own family, I decided to be different from my tribe especially in my approach to being a mother. For what it’s worth, my children may contradict me but here goes.
While tests and exam results at school are important, they are not the scores against which I peg my children. Yes I always check up on their homework and have had to cajole them into reading the ‘proper’ stuff or be outside with nature as opposed to accumulating screen time. I am very grateful then while at 8 years of age, my eldest stepped up and became my rock when my world seemed to have fallen apart after losing her brother. Today, she is carving her niche in fashion design and living independently while my youngest, who is obsessed with trains and buses, is a constant reminder of how lucky I am. Life has a way of delivering a blessing in disguise.
I love learning and I learn so much more about my purpose in life when I listen to people talking about their issues. While we are uniquely different, we are astoundingly the same in the fact that we want to better ourselves.
If you are an empath, an over giver and feeling riddled with limiting beliefs, then you’re not alone. Reach out, not to seek for the right answers but, for the opportunity to evaluate the why and what you have yet to discover about yourself.
Laurell K Hamilton’s words to me, hit the mark;
Walking your path doesn’t mean you don’t hurt, it means the pain is worth the progress. Sometimes, you have to break something down in order to remake it and that includes yourself, or it did for me. There were moments when I wept for an easier road, but in the end I would not trade my path for anyone else’s. It is mine and the travelling of it has made me who I am, and continues to shape and remould me into the best, happiest, most productive, most playful me, I’ve ever been.
Let’s breathe in, deeply … and let go.
x Marbeka