The Divine Path to Healing Centered Coaching with Brigette Rouson
“Somewhere along the way … we have bought into the myth that grinding harder, creating the perfect strategy, or having a deeper analysis of our problems is enough to solve them. Grinding harder, creating the perfect strategy, or having a deeper analysis of our problems doesn’t get at the deeper, more fundamental issues that plague our organizations and movements for justice. Trust, vision, wholeness, humane relationships, and hope are the tools required … to transform our organizations in a deeper way.”
Brigette Rouson has a passion for coaching that supports healing and liberation.
She was given her Conductor #63 at age 63, which calculates down to 9 — the number of transformations. This moment could only be seen as divine for the new ICF-certified coach. After obtaining her certification, a rich set of experiences would soon lead her to focus on coaching fellow Changemakers.
Brigette grew up in the South, sensitive to racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia that could at times cut sharp as a knife and other times be covered over with the syrup of language.
She’s spent decades working across multiple industries, including journalism to nurture a natural curiosity, law and public policy to advocate for the common good, academics to seek and share truths, philanthropy to organize resources for reshaping the system, and consulting to support organizational change.
Throughout these experiences, Brigette gained insights into the importance of intersecting identities and the sacredness of mind, body, and spirit. She explored culture, including traditional African spirituality and Indigenous culture in the Americas.
She co-founded and serves on the board of a grassroots grantmaking fund for changemakers of color in Washington D.C. while working with a regional funders group to advance Black liberation as a key to the region’s thriving.
As goals and roles evolved, these spaces presented a variety of dynamics, including creativity, tensions, and mutual support. Being involved required Brigette to closely tend to the personal and collective.
“I came to see that fulfilling my divine purpose means creating real community, beginning with the life spirit of every person and widening to ‘all our relations,” shared Brigette.
Becoming a member of Blooming Willow Coaching’s Black Conductors Coaching Certification cohort united Brigette’s years of coaching, woven into organizational consulting and volunteer leadership, and took it to a new level that brings calm, compassion, and clarity.
She joined the faculty that guided sessions for the first Black Women Conductors Coaching Certification cohort and remains active in conversations about practicing liberation and supporting leaders of the global majority, especially Black women and femmes.
“I know the pain and discontent that comes up for Changemakers— people who are re-imagining and making a better world. I also know the delight of opening up to new possibilities for themselves and those whose lives they touch,” Brigette explained.
Brigette’s journey to making a better world started with her journey of being a survivor of trauma in her younger years, a career-changer, the mother of a musician, a divorcee who has remarried, and a faith-based activist focused on solidarity across cultural differences.
In her career, the coach continues to build on her Blooming Willow Coaching experience through community work and starting a Black workers’ cooperative as part of a historical stream.
These collective personal and professional experiences have renewed her longtime commitment to connecting self-transformation with social transformation.
Reflecting on her journey, she shared, “Living our best lives to me means always remembering that change starts as an inside job. It begins with tuning into one’s intuition and inner wisdom and rippling out to find and act on what matters for the most people. Coaching is an invitation to charting a new course that allows us to stand in our greatness.”
