About Me

Hello and welcome! I’m so glad you’re here. I’m Paula 🙂

My Life’s Mission is to fully love and embrace my own spirit and gifts,and engage with others in ways that honor them, lift them up, and help them to find their own calling. I long to help others find the thing they thought they’d lost or forgotten somewhere along their life’s journey way. And I like to do that with a healthy dose of magic and fun.

I just have this feeling that you and I are going to get along like, well, kindred spirits.

The Background of this Blog and Site

This site and my blog, Welcoming Spirit, originally started as a home for my adventures in leading and running retreats back in 2008. And since then, it’s become SO MUCH MORE.

I’m working on getting certified through the Courageous Coaching Training Program, and I’ll be a certified life coach in October of 2015. At this time, I’m taking clients and it has been the most amazing thing I’ve ever done.

Aside from my life coaching adventure, I work as a project manager at a credit union, and lead retreats in my spare time.

More Info about Me

I hold two degrees in Religious Studies, my BA is from UC Santa Barbara and my Master’s is from Yale University (yes, that Yale). I had originally thought I wanted to teach at the university level.

After about 15 years of working as a web producer and project manager at some of the biggest ad agencies in San Francisco (Tribal DDB, AKQA, Havas), I found myself wanting something else, something more. The hours, the endless working on something to convince people that they were not enough and needed some product or service to complete themselves wore me out. I found that I was saying one thing to retreat-goers on the weekend (you are enough, you are fearlessly and perfectly made), and then walking in to work each weekday to send messages that broke my core philosophy back down.

In 2013, I was working at a very oppressive office, driving 3 to four hours a day, and trying to be an example of a good and loving mother to my 2 year old son, and longing to plan a wedding to my fiance of 5 years. There were too many dreams on hold, and I constantly felt confused and burnt out.

Ultimately, I’d fallen out of integrity with myself, and had lost site of my Values. And that’s at the same time as when I started working with Michelle Ward to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up.

In training to be a life coach, I’m slowly learning to get in touch with all of those parts of myself that I’d neglected. Loving has become easier. Being a role model doesn’t feel so scary. I’m delighted that I can be spontaneous, and spread magic when I want to. I’m saying yes to more, and not letting the other stuff get to me.

Ten in Three

On the blog, you might see me writing about my “Ten in Three,” which are the ten things I’m setting out to do before the end of 2016 (ten things I plan on doing in three years)

1. Getting married (done! October 2014)
2. Passing my PMP (Project Management Professional) exam (maybe not!)

2015

3. Start life coach training (done! January 2015)
4. Begin taking clients as a life coach (done! February 2015)
5. Building this blog and my other social media channels (underway)
6. Graduate from CCTP (October 2015)
7. Plan and lead a retreat for people wanting to chase their big dreams and take action to bring them in to reality (November 2015)

In 2016:

8. Work on jumping off on my own as a coach in 2016.
9. Take time to hang out with Zoom (my son) before he starts kindergarten.
10. Get my company going and kick butt.

I hope you enjoy your visit, and that you leave feeling inspired. Feel free to drop me a note at welcomingspirit at gmail dot com – I’d love to hear from you!! 🙂