My Story
A Helper at Heart
I have always been a "helper" at heart, wanting to make the world a better place — I got my Bachelor's in Environmental Science at Oregon State University (because "planet-saver" isn't an official major).
After undergrad, I steamrolled right into a PhD program in Environmental Studies at UC Santa Cruz, focused on Redwood Ecology and Place-Based Environmental Education.
I was fueled by passion, stubborn determination, and a dream — even while slowly burning out and sacrificing pieces of myself to the system.
My Breaking Point
For a long time, I used perfectionism, urgency, intense structure, borderline obsessive time blocking, and every ADHD tool in the book to try to force my way through.
Then one day, in the middle of presenting my dissertation research plan, I was suddenly struck with the realization that I didn't want to do it anymore.
Even though everything was finally in place for me to do exactly what I had dreamed of and worked towards for years — it was no longer my dream. Once I faced that painful reality… the relief I felt was immense.
A New Path
I left the program, took a pottery class, wrote a children's book and moved to Oregon. I took a job I ended up hating, immediately got sick, and quit after 4 days (!!) I ended up being sick for months — including a terrifying overnight hospital stay.
During my recovery from all of this, and in grappling with what to do next, I decided to sign up for Martha Beck's Wayfinder Life Coach Training program. I fell in love with coaching and have been working on building my business ever since.
My Approach
I created Holistic Task Completion Coaching because I saw a gap between hands-off therapy/coaching and "do-it-for-you" personal assistance. I wanted to offer something that could help folks work through both internal and external blocks, actually getting things done in the process, even right there during the session.
I'm a certified Wayfinder Life Coach and Holistic Time Management Practitioner. I'm also a highly sensitive person with an ADHD brain who low-key (high-key?) wants to save the world, loves social dancing, and is genuinely more silly and weird in real life than I might seem on a static website. In my world, we practice imperfection, honor our humanity, and get things done anyway.
~ Cristina 💜
