About Tomar
How I Arrived Here
A circuitous route has brought me to the career of helping people in midlife reclaim their dreams and find their time to bloom: I had to arrive at my own midlife blooming!
As a multi-gifted “Rainbow person,” I was pulled in many directions. It is hard for Rainbow people to find one focus in life to commit to. We’re always seeking our true vocation and saying “that’s not quite it.” I started out as a visual artist and spent almost 20 years exhibiting paintings, teaching, and lecturing on art.
The Spiritual Call
It wasn’t long before the spiritual path beckoned strongly. Through my thirties and forties I went to every spiritual workshop I could find (yes, I was a workshop junkie) and developed the desire to work with people one on one. I spent six years formally studying healing, opened a healing practice, and phased out my art career. I loved the subtle healing work, but my intellectual/verbal leanings led me towards counseling. I studied psychology and shifted to “holistic psychotherapy,” incorporating spiritual and body-mind approaches. (Many of these I use in my coaching work—see Tomar’s Toolbox).
My painting, The Quest, symbolizes the spiritual search
By 1995 I had discovered my spiritual path. The Diamond Approach of A.H. Almaas combines wisdom from many traditions with the insights of Western psychology. This work now informs my view of human potential as virtually limitless, capable of amazing heights and depth, authenticity and aliveness. I have gained deeper compassion for the human struggle, and an appreciation of the pure essence that seeks expression through each one of us.
Back to School
A few years ago I returned to graduate school for a second masters degree, this time in art therapy (having an MFA in painting already). I chose this path to fulfill my state’s licensing requirements for psychotherapists. But a funny thing happened to me on the way to getting licensed . . . Musing on the long road ahead, I literally had a “light bulb” moment, one of those bolts of guidance, telling me to become a life coach! Little did I know I was about to enter a vortex of miraculous unfolding, and was about to find “it,” what I’d been searching for all along.
Why I Love Coaching
For me coaching is the perfect vehicle for the capacities I value of attunement, insight, support, and enthusiasm for the creative flame of others. I see coaching as one of the most direct ways to help people transform their lives. Coaching helps you connect to your passionate purpose, that pure essence that longs for expression. Then coaching grounds that inspiration in practical reality.
Walking the Talk
As you can see, I have personal experience of many of the issues confronting my clients—the challenges of the creative life; the dilemma of multiple directions; career choices and transitions; returning to school and creating a new business in midlife. Above all, I have sought, all my life, to find my true calling—or callings. And I have finally found fulfilling work that makes my heart sing, and contributes to the lives of others. I know this is what so many people are looking for.
In short – I am blooming in midlife. I created a life I love after fifty, and I have never felt happier or more alive. I know from my own experience that it can take a long time to fully grow up and become the person we are meant to be. And so I can state with authority: It’s never too late to bloom!
