About me
My work is a love letter to us - marginalized and intersectional people.
I believe that when we learn to show up fully, and on our own terms, we each become a living, breathing form of direct action against oppression.
So that’s what I’m here to make happen, one human at a time.
On this page, I share more about myself as a human being, about my approach to coaching, and details of my credentials, training and professional experiences. Read as much or as little as you like.
My human journey here,
and the things I believe
Hi, there, beautiful person. My name is Meera (she/her). You’ve already read a little about me on my welcome page. But here’s a bit more.
What you might already know: I’m a queer woman of color, soul mate to a white, trans man, the daughter of Indian immigrants, and the endpoint in a lineage of intergenerational trauma. I’ve also spent decades coping with chronic illness, emotional healing, internalized and external experiences of oppression, and the haunting grief of losing loved ones to suicide. I’m also deeply empathetic, left-handed, have an irreverent sense of humor, a stubborn streak, and a penchant for emphatic cussing.
A little more: I used to be the queen of compartmentalization. For a long time, I was certain that paths to belonging meant choosing between parts of myself, and endlessly proving myself. My entire existence felt like a terrible march towards inevitable loss, and soon identity became a loaded word. Life became an equation: how much of X would I sacrifice to have Y? What price I was willing to pay? Maybe if I could just fit myself within invisible lines of “ok enough” for everyone - I could be safe and still be a person. But it turned out that I was sacrificing something the entire time: myself. I spent so many years controlling and carving my deepest essence into pieces that I no longer knew how it felt to be a Whole Person. Just a hollow, hurting, high-achieving perfectionist. I floated through the world in pieces…until I decided that I wouldn’t.
Things changed in fits and starts. It took me decades to learn to hear my inner voice when it speaks, and to learn how to take up space and live out my story without shame or secrecy. Sure, there have been some soundtrack-worthy moments of epiphany, bursts of fear (lots of therapy and some joyful experiences being coached myself) - but the most important parts of my journey have been about having the courage to believe that my truest life isn’t something I need to “figure out” - it actually comes from following my own messy, beautiful truth.
Life can get really effing complicated. Relationships can get complicated. The world is complicated. Systems of oppression are complicated. But WE are not complicated, and when we feed into the narratives that tell us otherwise, we muffle our own voices. Over time, as I’ve found the courage to be in alignment with my deepest self, the clearer my sense of self has become, and the clearer my voice has become.
That’s how - through a circuitous journey that wound through experiences like corporate management, professional musical theatre, documentary wedding photography, and wedding planning advocacy (yeah, I invented that term) - I’ve come to be a certified coach, artist, and writer whose work is focused on helping My People (maybe you’re one of them!) make sense of and find clarity within your own complex identities and experiences. To peel back the layers that have formed over your deepest essence, and discover who you’ve always been all along.
To recognize and trust your own inner voice above any other…is to belong to yourself for the first time. And once you belong to yourself, your life becomes a clearer place. Period.
I believe that each of us has an essential truth living within us, and I’m here to help you uncover yours.
I can’t wait to know you.
Meera
My approach to coaching
I envision a world where marginalized people exist as our full selves without those selves being perpetually influenced by the needs, comfort and perspectives of dominant-identity people. And that starts by taking ourselves back from our own coping mechanisms, and from the ways we've internalized the systems around us into our sense of self.
I believe in this so much that I’ve built an entire conceptual framework around it.
That’s why the heart of my coaching is about helping you relearn how to trust yourself: wholly, in all ways, and without reservation, so that you can make CHOICES.
Because the systems around us will always try to convince us that we must hustle to survive, that we are simultaneously not enough and too much…and the only way to combat that is unwavering self-trust.
Moving towards trust begins by uncovering all the ways you treat yourself with mistrust - by trying to control things you’re powerless to change, by demonizing aspects of your own instincts, your truest nature, and the ways that you naturally move through the world. That mistrust may originate from old patterns, from continuously navigating oppression, from stories you’ve learned and internalized about yourself and your identities, from the endless capitalistic thrumming that says you must earn worthiness and belonging. Whatever the sources, this self-mistrust is keeping you from knowing yourself the way you deserve to be known. And I’m not here for that shit.
Through our coaching relationship, I’m inviting you to uncover who you really are and let go of what you’re not. To recognize the difference between agency and control. To excavate and distinguish between who you are and who you’ve had to be in order to navigate oppression. To shine a glowing spotlight on the things that make you uniquely, spectacularly you, and to recommit to them. I’m here to help you find a way back to trusting yourself before anything else.
And while the work we’re doing is important, it’s also full of joy, laughter and the feeling of being seen and known. My clients describe me as deeply empathetic, an unbelievably good listener, a magical pattern-finder, validating, insightful, adaptive, intuitive, honest, safe and skillful at blending humor with seriousness.
How my people experience me.
“I am usually quite nervous and guarded with people I don't know well, especially when I'm asked to be truly vulnerable and show my true emotions. After a couple of sessions with you, I felt like you had my best intentions at heart and I knew I would be listened to fully in our time together. …And the space you created was with imbued with care - you never questioned me or pried for more information when I shared about an identity that you did not also hold.”
— L.H.
“I really appreciated how inviting and welcoming you were of the ways I tried to process things between sessions - and also nonjudgmental about it! I mean, someone being nonjudgmental shouldn't surprise me, but that was a moment where I felt like it was really helpful for me as a QPOC to work with a fellow QPOC as well. Like it wasn't weird with you to talk about or consider ancestors and deceased family as spirits that are still very active parts of life, whereas with previous (white) people I've worked with sometimes it felt like I was speaking some kind of alien language to bring up the ancestors and family connections. I appreciated with you that it didn't feel weird at all.”
— R.P.
“You are SUCH a good listener. Like, part of my job is to train people to listen, so I know it is a very challenging skill that many people think they might be good at but few actually are. You take the time to really be with someone without immediately trying to respond in a way that clarifies or moves things forward; you ask questions and actually wait for the response and really attend to everything that your clients say. That allows you to bring things to light in a way that really meets clients where they are, instead of just bestowing your own insights on them without really understanding the very specific context and moment they might be in -- and I think that makes the give and take of coaching so much richer, and also allows for people who do coaching with you to feel so empowered and self-trusting on the other side of the experience.”
— H.B.
Coaching: my credentials and training
I have been coaching professionally since 2018.
Coaching is both an art and a skill, and we meet at the intersection of both those things. To the art of coaching, I bring all of who I am, the lenses of what I’ve experienced, HUMOR, the gifts I’ve developed over time, deep intuition, empathy, a knack for guiding in a co-creative way, deeply embodied anti-oppression practices, and an abiding faith in you.
When it comes to the skill of coaching, I’m hugely invested in education and in learning a variety of diverse and effective exploration tools that make it possible for me to meet My People right where you are no matter where that might be at the moment, or how your incredible mind works. My foundational formal training is through the ICF-accredited Wayfinder Coach Training program, I am a Certified Wayfinder Coach, and am also certified as an Associate Certified Coach with the International Coaching Federation. I have since done a number of subsequent educational programs to keep expanding my professional skill, detailed below this.
Since coaching is an unregulated industry, I believe that it’s best when we are transparent with clients about our ongoing education and experience. So for specifics about my training and skills, expand the dropdowns below!
-
Direct Experience:
750+ hours of direct coaching work with clients, to-date.
90% of my clients have one or more marginalized identities
Training, Credentials, and Continuing Ed
Certified Wayfinder Coach (Martha Beck Institute)
Associate Certified Coach (International Coaching Federation)
Art and Science of Coaching - The Institute for Equity Centered Coaching/Trudi Lebron:
Equity Centered Coaching Program - The Institute for Equity Centered Coaching (6 month program - completed)
Member of The Exchange: a professional association for coaches and leaders committed to justice & equity
-
BA Wellesley College (Psychology)
Corporate management (6 years - Team Leadership, logistics and employee development)
Professional musical theatre/vocalist (3 years - member, Actor’s Equity Association)
Professional documentary wedding photographer focused on disrupting problematic industry practices (7 years)
Wedding planning advocacy & coaching (5 years, bundled with photography work)
Coaching is an unregulated field, so please take a look at my FAQs to understand a little more. Sadly, many coaches employ predatory practices that prey on vulnerable people, so be armed with knowledge as you enter into conversations with us!