I am Chay – your soulful, down to earth life coach.
I hold safe, empowering, and nourishing spaces for women to journey back to their hearts.
Because life is precious, and time feels sacred in this busy world.
We need more present, calm, and empowered women.
My story starts right in the town where I now find myself settled with my husband and three fur babies.
I grew up in a relatively small coastal town in South Africa called East London. Today, I live just outside of the city where my love of gardening has me pottering for hours on what we call our farm-ish slice of happiness.
In many ways, the life I lead today is simply the full expression of who I have always felt to be inside. It just took me many moons, experiences, and a deep dive into myself during the pandemic of 2020 to be this version of me.
After school I worked and travelled in America for a year and worked in my hometown for another year. I honestly did not know which way my big dreams wanted to take me. All I did know was that I felt very deeply for people and the planet and wanted to help in some way. After four years of fun (and learning I promise) I graduated as a teacher. Next stop was London where I worked and travelled and had some more of that fun.
I seemed to gravitate towards people who needed to share and talk. This led me to doing some inspiring work with young people in London and I began to think counselling was perhaps where I was meant to pour all this love into.
After four years in London, I came back to South Africa and taught for 16 years. 8 of those years were also spent as a deeply passionate counsellor for young people.
Being in a school environment meant that I also held space for many teachers, moms, and other care takers- most of them women. I began to sense common threads that women were struggling with, and I started feeling that pull inside of me.
There was something else I was meant to pursue now. But being the overly busy person I was at that stage of my life, I never gave myself room or time to unpack what I was actually feeling. I just kept forging on- with the job of being busy!
The universe did have a plan though……when lockdown of 2020 hit, I was suddenly not busy. Nowhere to go, nothing to “fix” or plan for…..I felt so lost. I had not sat with myself for so long that I did not know where to start. There were tears. The reckoning was not pretty!
It felt scary and I kept gripping onto what I knew- getting busy doing something else. But something was about to change…..
Lockdown revealed so much to me. Mostly in the form of deep questions I had not been willing to sit with until then:
What followed this time of inner reflection was months of reading, learning, unlearning, reconnecting with myself, and then finally the rebloom!
So much inside of me changed in this time that the outside looked vastly different suddenly. More beautiful, hopeful, fun (I had lost my fun along the way of being an adult) and just energizing to my soul.
I had been making decisions from fear for years (this is what being so busy did to me) that I had forgotten how much sweeter life is when you operate from a place of love.
I emerged knowing this for sure: a woman must love and care for herself to love and care for all that is important to her.
I knew I did not want to be a counsellor anymore. And, as much as I adored my students, the frenetic school system also no longer aligned with my yearning for more peace and presence in my days.
So, I courageously quit a successful teaching career of 20 years ( I think I shocked a lot of people) and spent my time studying to be the life coach I am today. A proud, passionate, and inspired life coach.
Supporting women to live their best lives – the way that feels true and right for them- is work that truly lights me up.
