Raspberry Jam Visions

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Have your ever picked raspberries for jam? This was a regular summer ritual in my family. I have now decided that my mother’s berry picking practices were a perfect way to teach me how to create and actualize my visions. Mom would hand us each a container of a size best suited to our abilities and head us out the door just after the dew dried, to “fill it up before play”. Any whining or sighs were met with “well, if you want raspberry jam for your toast this winter we are going to need a few berries.” This vision of her fresh homemade bread with butter and tangy raspberry jam spread liberally over the top was usually enough to silence our complaints. Then she would add “the best thing to do is go get started and it will be over before you know it”. (These last words of wisdom will still get me working when my child voice is whining out a litany of excuses.) So off we would go.

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Now, our raspberry patch was not the domesticated garden variety, but rather the wild kind, growing up between the windfalls and brush piles at the edge of fields. If you have ever encountered this kind of raspberry picking you know all about the loose logs, some of which are half burnt, and whose soot leave black marks on everything that brushes up against them. You will likely remember how easy it is to fall in a hole while trying to reach the biggest best berries that are way out of reach, but the only ones you think are worth picking. It is on this part of the raspberry picking I would like to focus our attention. How I eventually learned to pick these jam makers is also how I have learned to actualize my visions most successfully.

For example, each week I receive one or two calls from others wanting to start a coaching practice. They most often want to know what it is like, how I attract clients, how I knew what I wanted to do, and where I got my training. In order to answer these questions, I would like to take us out to the raspberry patch.

I have always been a bit of a risk taker, and enjoy lightly swaying in the breeze right at the edge of my abilities. This is how I approached raspberry picking. I would grab my pail, scan the horizon for what looked like a “good patch” and start picking as soon as I reached my destination. Sometimes in my desire to pick berries outside my reach, I would go tumbling down into the bottom of some hole. With the berries from my pail raining down on top of me and into the brush, I would wail out a cry of frustration, claw my way back up to sunlight and set my scratched and soot-streaked body back to picking again.

My siblings each had their own approach. One would be crashing around in the brush picking like a fiend with all sorts of bits of leaves and bugs getting scooped up along with the berries while mowing through to the end goal – one bucket of berries before play. My other sibling would be meandering along the edge of the patch, talking to the family dog and sharing the pickings along the way – one for you, one for me and one for the bucket. The sibling who mowed through the picking process would be the first to leave the patch, but would still be sitting on the front porch cleaning the berries as the rest of us returned. The one who shared with the family dog was usually able to convince me to help “finish up” the top quarter of the bucket so we could walk back together, having a visit along the way. In this warm familiar community way, we worked on our common raspberry jam vision. The results were a full winter’s pleasure of wild raspberry jam for our morning toast.

My berry picking experiences often come back to me as I am working on a new vision. I remember how in the beginning of actualizing a vision, I will often wind up dumping a half-filled pail of “my best berries,” in the course of trying to figure out how to get to those big ones just out of reach. Sometimes I will be focused so hard on the big ones that I squish the ones right in front of me. You might say “why bother going to pick wild raspberries when tame ones will still make jam and are much easier to pick?” The truth is that there really is nothing quite as tangy and delightful as WILD raspberry jam. In working on my latest vision of a thriving Executive Coaching service for women with leadership responsibilities, I can see the similarities between these lush, tangy wild berries and the women I am working with. The ordinary garden variety CEO just does not seem to satisfy my nature. I am much more intrigued and engaged by those leaders that are growing against the corporate grain of societal norms to integrate social values and well-being into their work and organizations. These are the juiciest berries to me, and make the best community jam. For others, they may get the most out of working in a totally different area of coaching. I understand that it might not be the right berry patch or even the right berries for others. That is half the fun. One of my colleagues Kathy Anderson has a coaching and consulting practice that is focused on working with Dental Professionals – different berries in a different patch! Yet, when I watch the video clip on her website, I know she is working with what are for her the richest, tastiest jam makers of all. These differences allow us to trade our wares and have a bit of variety with our toast now and again. Just to be clear, it is not individuals that represent the berries and become jam. It is the coaching process and the end result of the synergy between the coach and the person they are working with, that is the berry we are picking and transforming together.

So one of the things that makes a vision achievable for me is knowing what I am reaching for and why. A woman whose work greatly influenced my clarity around my Executive Coaching vision and how it matches my core passion, is Lori-anne Demers. Lori-anne offers a workshop called Passion & Power -- a three day retreat designed as the beginning of a journey for getting reacquainted with yourself and distinguishing your passion – a journey that will leave you present to the gift that you are. Lori-anne says “we all have a gift, a core passion that, when we are present to it, it gives us our reason for being.”

I remember my raspberry jam experiences when I am symbolically falling in a hole and clawing my way out, all scratched and dirty. I remind myself: if I already had everything to reach my vision, I wouldn’t be reaching. I remember that this occasional stumbling is not a life-threatening situation, only frustrating and at times embarrassing. I can remember because I have grown, stretched, stumbled and successfully grasped what had appeared impossible, many times before.

On occasion my mother would join us in our morning picking. She would come wandering out with her pail strapped through an old belt that was slightly longer than what she needed to hold up her pants. As she wadded into a patch filled with the biggest, most lush berries fully ripened in the sun – which we had all totally missed, she would gracefully slide one hip slightly to the side so her bucket was securely cradled. Then hand over hand, with the prowess of an Olympic athlete, she picked until her bucket was full. Years of perfection in her method, and care and love for berry picking shined from her full, clean pail of berries. The smile on her face captures the image of rows of jars filled with jam resting on newsprint by the kitchen window. At the same time, she is fully present to the sun on her back and the ripe berries moving swiftly between her fingers. In admiration, I would whisper to myself “some day I am going to be able to pick berries just like that!”

Finding others that you admire and are champions in your area or approach seems necessary to sustaining long-term visions. When I was considering setting up a coaching practice, I researched other coaches who were interested in the same area as I was. I looked at what they were doing and said to myself “some day I am going to have a coaching practice like that!” One of my favorite mentors is Mary Beth O’Neill. I have had the pleasure of hearing her speak on a teleconference, and have read and reread her book Executive Coaching with Backbone and Heart: A Systems Approach to Engaging Leaders with Their Challenge. When I first was introduced to her work I felt like I had come home. I find that no matter how much I may feel I am stepping onto new ground, there are others who have successfully walked at least part of the path before me. It is this support that allows me to dream of the day when I am gracefully engaged in a coaching process with the shiny jars of experience ready to spread over memories, each held in balance in every ounce of my being.

Colleagues and Work Sited:

Anderson, Kathy. Personal Best Consulting and Executive Coaching Services. The mission is to be an outstanding provider of Regulatory College-approved Continuing Education Workshops and Executive Coaching, specifically for Dental Professionals. www.dentalcoaching.ca

Demers, Lori-anne. Lori-anne Demers & Associates Inc. is an organization of people who are committed to empowering people to expand their quality of life, through understanding themselves, and operating at their maximum capacity with joy and ease. www.lademers.com

O’Neill, Mary Beth. Executive Coaching with Backbone and Heart: A Systems Approach to Engaging Leaders with Their Challenge. Jossey-Bass: A Wiley Company. San Francisco, CA. 2000.

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Terrill Welch
A Woman Behind Women
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