The Power-ful Traci Powers
Traci Powers doesn’t get her name from just anywhere; she is indeed incredibly Power-ful. Widowed at 42 with a 12-year-old son and an 18-year-old daughter, she returned to work just four days after her husband passed away. She became a Wonder Woman, making sure that her children could want for nothing. She refused to let them see her vulnerability; she covered up her pain by working twice as hard. She held herself together purely for their sake.
Traci was always tough, but that experience made her even tougher. No one could tell her what to do. She was already single-handedly taking care of her immediate family and would soon to be taking care of her extended family too. She carried so much responsibility and she couldn’t afford to seem weak. She took in her sick father and became the executor of her uncle’s will.
Traci came from a large Italian family in which her cousins were closer than siblings. When her uncle died, only some of his nieces and nephews got named in the will. The ones that were not named became angry and cruel. They were especially horrible to Traci who was in charge of executing the will. They expected her to change the details and give them a cut, something that Traci felt was unethical, unjust and illegal. These cousins who were once her closest friends abused her online and cut her off everywhere else. They were no longer the people she knew. It felt like she had lost them for good, but in this case, these people chose to walk out of her life.
Traci felt lost and hurt. She couldn’t understand how the people she grew up with could change so drastically at the flip of a coin. Traci would come home every day from work and bawl. She couldn’t live like this any longer. She finally decided she needed help. She tried therapy and counseling, but nothing worked. They all made the same error of telling her what to do. At one point, she heard Kim’s coaching approach on The Frame of Mind Coaching™ Podcast, and she reached out. Traci was then connected with Becca as her coach, and there was an instant connection.
“Becca was so calm and soft-spoken, she let me ramble and get it all out,” says Traci. “She never told me what to do but asked me what would happen if I approached things another way. For me, that really worked.”
Over the course of her ten weeks of coaching, Traci learned several important things:
1. You are allowed to feel. Traci had been in survival mode for so long that she never actually grieved for her husband. With Becca, she was able to let her guard down and take her armor off. Traci learned that she should feel things, but she shouldn’t sit in those feelings forever, she had to move on.
2. Don’t be a chapter in someone else’s book, write your own story. Her cousins wrote their own story - it was a sad one, but it was their story, not hers. She had to let them go and start paying attention to the people who were good and kind to her, not to the people that were mean and cruel.
3. Stop and listen before getting defensive. Traci often got defensive whenever she thought she was being verbally attacked. Through coaching, she became less defensive, a better team player, and she learned to listen to the people around her. She got promoted at work and now lives her life with much more peace.
Becca was a lifesaver. She changed the way Traci communicates with those around her and changed the way she sees her story. “I still hear Becca’s voice in my head, telling me to stop and think before I act,” says Traci. She and Becca are still in contact, five years after coaching.
Thanks to Becca, the Frame of Mind Coaching™ team and the FOM Methodology, Traci now lives life with much greater ease, joy, peace and happiness.
When Traci was asked if she would recommend Frame of Mind Coaching™ to others, she had just one word to say… “Absolutely.”