PORT TOWNSEND — Heather Flanagan knows the challenges facing work-at-home moms.
She’s a career-certified business and life coach who works out of her 16th Street home office, often juggling the demands of her profession, a 21-month-old baby and a 9-year-old.
So it was no surprise that Flanagan, a life coach for nine years, started the Work At Home Moms support group.
“It’s a coaching group with the intention of being focused on wins, successes and what’s working,” Flanagan said.
“With being a work-at-home mom, it’s very easy to be down on yourself, and with or without a baby sitter, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and be self judging.”
Her aim is to avoid that common pitfall.
She uses her sense of humor.
“So much of what we do, our ego trips, are just so ridiculous,” she said, sitting at home with her baby, Blake Flanagan Tinling, in her arms and her son, Logan Flanagan, not far away.
“It’s like I’m waiting for my mother-in-law to like me so I can feel better about myself.”
She lives with her partner, Microsoft engineer Aaron Tinling, who works in Redmond most of the week and is Blake’s father.
The work-at-home moms group is not about whining, she said.
“We don’t ask why. It’s what you want to do about it — how can people help you. It’s very purposeful support. We don’t spend time complaining.”
Fellow work-at-home mom, Shelly Randall, a communications consultant, writer and photographer in Port Townsend, suggested the WAHMs group, as she calls it, and Flanagan took her up on the idea.
“Working at home is one thing, but it is a very different proposition to work at home with a child in place,” Randall said.
“It’s really valuable to get together with other working moms to get help,” she said.
“I appreciate that in the group we set action goals and are accountable to achieving at least some of them by the next week.”
Randall, who met Flanagan through a Jefferson County Public Health baby nursing program, said the group sessions are helping her reach long-term business goals and create camaraderie.
Flanagan, who sold sensors for factory automation before she was laid off in 2000, earned her psychology degree in 1991 from Whitman College in Walla Walla.
At 40, she views parenting as something of a spiritual practice that led her to be more efficient in her business.
She said rather than going the route of her successful therapist and father, John, whose specialty in Portland is post-traumatic stress disorder, she chose coaching over the analytical end of psychology.
‘Empower people’
“I just wanted to empower people,” said Flanagan, who also leads a “Procrastinator’s Power-Up Group,” teaching five secrets to overcoming procrastination.
She also individually counsels business people and others about achieving goals and dreams.
Flanagan defines herself as a reformed procrastinator who did as little as possible to get through high school, but remaining in advanced classes.
It all hit home, however, when she almost flunked out of college during her freshman year, she said, and she pulled her life together.
She got focused, she said, and stayed focused.
She blogs about her business at www.visualizepossibilities.com.
She defines a life coach in a recent blog post: “It’s like outsourcing someone to hold your best interests as sacred and reflect your importance as a human being back to you.
“In our culture, many of us have learned to behave as though everyone else matters more than ourselves.
“But I would argue that this doesn’t balance out well, as no one knows your needs, visions and callings as well as you do.
“And a life coach can reflect you back to yourself, minus any emotional reactivity or expectations from loved ones, employees or bosses. This detached but alert presence can really help you get more clarity on your challenges.”
She can be reached at 360-379-0322 or by e-mail at heather@heatherflanagan.com.
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Port Townsend-Jefferson County Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-385-2335 or at jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.