Meet Your Coach
Hi! I’m Robin.
Pronouns: she/her
I’m passionate about helping people find community and belonging – a task that’s become harder than ever these days.
Specifically, I’m passionate about helping young adults who spend a ton of time online, whether that be gaming, streaming, or binge-watching YouTube. I specialize in working with people who want friends, community, belonging, a thriving social life, etc., but have no idea how to get there.
Why?
Because I’ve been there. I grew up feeling like everyone else had some kind of instruction manual for human interaction that I didn’t – or at least mine was missing a few key pages. I cobbled together something that worked, allowed me to make friends and stop feeling quite so defective, but it was like a piece of software that, sure, ran beautifully…until you needed to update it. The code was so poorly written, so haphazardly cobbled together, that the smallest tweaks would take ungodly amounts of time to get working.
Today, I’m a social butterfly. I make new friends easily and quickly. I work steadily to deepen the friendships that I already have. And I know what it is to experience a deep sense of belonging and connection to others, in a variety of contexts. I had a coachee recently ask me what it felt like to be part of a group, one where you really belong. This was my answer:
Me: It feels fulfilling. It feels like being seen. It feels like being part of something bigger. It feels like there are more levels and layers to the interactions that you have with people. And there’s an experiential component that I don’t have words for. It feels like you become different.
Coachee: Only in that group?
Me: No, you take some of it with you.
I want that for others. I want that for you, reading this. I know that it’s possible, and I know that it’s not magic or luck. I want to give people a sense of belonging that they can carry with them, a point of reference for what it looks and sounds and feels like to be heard, seen, understood. To matter. So that when you go searching for it out in the world, you’ll know what you’re looking for, and you’ll know with certainty that it does exist.
-Robin
Why “Blue Star”?
This is Padt
aka Ginger Jesus
He was part of a band called “The Blue Star Tattoos” and loved Converse shoes, so when he died, and I realized that the Converse All Star logo is a blue star…I knew what I had to do:
<<< My Left Ankle
The default assumption, I'm sure, is that Padt was a good friend of mine, hence the tattoo. But the truth is, he and I were never close. It would be a stretch even saying that he was a friend. We talked when we had shared classes together, and we had a very close MUTUAL friend, but I never fit with his core circle - I didn't fit with ANY circle in school - so we didn't spend much time together unless we were in class.
That tattoo isn't about remembering a good friend. The tattoo is about remembering a good person. It's about the boy who used to smile at me every time he saw me, who greeted me and spoke to me as if we WERE friends. He never looked at me like I was weird, and like he wondered why I was even there. I was kind and respectful to him (I hope, anyway), and that's all it took for him to treat me like anyone else, friends or not.
At 17, I had no idea what my future would look like, and I certainly had no idea what Padt's would, either. But I always had this thought in the back of my mind that years down the road there would be stories trickling in about the wild antics and next-level adventures that Padt and his friends had come up with. I assumed that he would go on to live this huge, hilarious, unbelievable, "no way", stories-for-the-campfire filled life. That's just the kind of person he was.
When he died, and I looked around at my peers, in the days but also the weeks and months after, I realized how many broken people he had been holding together. As I got older, and started learning about the broken places inside me, I could understand why. I see how rare it is to encounter someone who makes you feel like you have their full attention, like what you have to say is important to them, even when they barely know you. And I see how many people in the world desperately need that.
It’s been 14 years now, and I still remember the little bit of kindness he showed me in the midst of a lot of misery. That memory has been my guiding light for over a decade now, and continues to guide me in the work that I do. It’s the north star in my life, and in my coaching.
And my north star is blue.
Rest in peace, Padt.