Courage story

~3 minute read.

Cathy Fyffe is a women’s coach and mentor supporting women who feel like they have lost themselves, their spark for life and their relationship. Through her Create a Life to Love program Cathy guides women on a deep journey to rediscover who they are now after years being a wife and mother.  She has the secret to creating a life and relationship they love – permanently … putting women back in the drivers seat of their life and supporting them to become the intentional creators of their own life.

Having been through this experience herself and understanding the emotional heartache of a relationship that leaves you feeling alone, unsupported and taken for granted, Cathy is well placed to lead other women through their personal transformation.  Her warm and caring approach combined with her humour and practicality allows her to hold a safe, non-judgemental space for the women she supports.

Cathy and her husband live in Melbourne and have an adult stepson, two young adult children still living at home and a dog. They love to travel and experience all that life has to offer.

Today, Cathy is our guest blogger, sharing her story of courage with us.

In 2010 I felt like I had reached a stage in my marriage where I absolutely couldn’t go on the way things were. We had been together for 14 years at that point.  My husband had a son who was five when we got together, and we had two children of our own during that time.

Over those difficult and soul sucking years especially with the challenges of step parenting, I felt very alone and unsupported in my marriage.  I had become more and more disillusioned with him and our relationship. I had suggested marriage counselling but he was not interested.

I had arrived at the point where I felt I had 2 choices in relation to my husband. 

Option One was to walk away and leave him – to split up our family.  To go through the painful process of uncoupling with the huge impact that would have on our children, as well as the significant financial impact.

Option Two – was do something else. At the time though, I didn’t know what that something else would look like.  What I did know was that in spite of our many challenges, I still loved my husband and I wanted my children to grow up with their father as an active presence in their lives.

The deep emotional pain of my life led me to go on a learning and growth journey back to me, recognising that the only way I could change my life was if I took personal responsibility for my own happiness and what I created in my life.  I invested in coaches and mentors who guided me through the changes I needed to make. 

I learnt about:

  • my patterns of communication that weren’t working for me
  • my individual beliefs that were holding me back from getting what I wanted 
  • my values and how to create a life in alignment with my values
  • that my people pleasing behaviour was not pleasing anyone, especially myself

Through this process I realised that I had given up so much of myself in order to keep my husband happy. I had always had a strong interest in personal growth for example, but had given it up as I didn’t want to incur his disapproval as he considered it “hippy woo woo”. 

I was jumping through hoops to please him and in the process made myself deeply unhappy. I had also been making him wrong and blaming him for everything that was not working in our lives.

The deep emotional pain of my life led me to go on a learning and growth journey back to me, recognising that the only way I could change my life was if I took personal responsibility for my own happiness and what I created in my life.  

Through reconnecting to me, and bringing a new energy into my life, I knew I wanted to make the same difference to other women, but felt my husband wouldn’t support me.  He had been very suspicious of the personal growth work I was doing and felt it was taking me away from him. In one way he was right. I was no longer willing to give up key parts of myself to keep him happy. Having experienced my own transformation, I wanted to work with my mentor and learn how to coach and mentor other women.

The most courageous thing I have done, was to have a conversation with my husband about where I was truly at – knowing at the time that it could be the end of our marriage.  I was prepared to do this because I was no longer willing to betray myself and my values to please him.

At the time, he didn’t respond well but over the next few months we had ongoing conversations about the changes we needed to make as a couple and what it would mean for me to become a life coach and how this would impact our relationship.

Cathy & Nigel enjoying life at Sunshine Beach

By applying all that I learnt thankfully our relationship recalibrated. I’m incredibly grateful that I have now fully transformed my relationship and my life. 

Through reconnecting to me, and bringing a new energy into my life, I knew I wanted to make the same difference to other women …

I retrained and educated myself as a women’s coach and mentor, so I could teach other women what I had learnt. I am blessed to have mentored and coached 100s of women (and a few good men) to transform their lives and create a life and relationship they love. 

If you would like to get in touch with Cathy, you can connect with her in the following ways:

Cathy, you are strong and kind; passionate and humble; caring and empathic. Your commitment to your growth and that of others is energising and so valuable.

Thank you for sharing your story Cathy; your story is powerful and your message is empowering.

I am very humbled that you have shared your story here.

@CourageChick

aka Dinzzo

#celebratingfriends

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