Intersections Along My Healing Path and the MCC Journey
- Brainz Magazine
- Sep 12
- 4 min read
Updated: Sep 16
Award-winning coach and multi-certified professional coach Catherine Finger contributes to the well-being of others by offering transformational coaching for leadership, health, and life.
On June 6, 2025, I underwent total knee replacement surgery, a milestone shaped by both a life well lived and the inevitabilities of degenerative arthritis. As I reflect on my recovery, I see clear intersections between my healing journey and my pursuit of continued growth and excellence as a professional coach.
I’ve inhabited this remarkable body for 64 years. For much of that time, I’ve also been privileged to walk alongside others as their coach. Coaching fuels and grounds me with daily purpose. Several years ago, embracing the International Coaching Federation (ICF) framework transformed both my practice and my perspective, inspiring me to pursue its highest credential, the Master Certified Coach (MCC).
Learning to walk again and heal
In the days after surgery, my focus narrowed to survival and adaptation. I learned to walk again, leaning on my brother, my walker, and later my cane. Each tentative step was costly, paid for in pain and swelling, but I held a vision of movement and freedom that guided me. Gradually, that vision gave rise to new habits of discipline, patience, and resilience.
At first, progress felt painfully slow. My gait was shortened, my stride awkward. I feared this was to become my “new normal.” Yet I stayed open, trusting my physical therapists and their carefully measured regimens. Sometimes progress meant more pain, more swelling, more frustration. Other times it came as the tiniest widening of my gait, imperceptible to me but clear to those watching closely.
Learning to coach differently
My first steps toward the MCC credential followed a similar path. I began taping my coaching sessions and enrolled in a Level 3 training program. Reviewing my own recordings against the ICF competencies offered immediate feedback. I quickly saw what was working, and where I needed to shift.
Like many coaches, I talked too much. Even as I narrowed my word count over the years, I still found myself overexplaining, overfilling space. It took practice and focus to release that habit and embrace a deeper stance of listening. I learned to offer clients the spaciousness to wander, just as I prefer when I am in a museum, free to let the art itself speak to me.
Over time, I released expectations, let go of the need to “serve,” and began trusting both my clients and the coaching process. I experimented with new approaches, limiting myself to seven-word questions, studying accomplished MCC coaches, and trying on different ways of being. Some clients were bemused by my sudden shifts, just as I sometimes struggled with my new knee, but I kept at it, trusting that new habits would take root.
Measuring progress on the mat and in coaching
Just as my therapists measured my gait, my mentors and supervisors measured my coaching. We watched, reflected, and celebrated milestones. I acknowledged shortcomings, my “longcomings” of too many words, and gradually shifted my coach speech from over 30% of a session into the 20s. Each small drop felt like a widening stride, a step closer to the MCC presence I was seeking.
Breaking into the mid 20% range was a milestone as exhilarating as my first pain-free walk down a long hallway. Neither meant the journey was complete. Both reminded me that progress often arrives in small increments, quietly compounding into transformation.
The deeper parallel
Both healing and coaching have required me to practice trust, patience, and openness to outcomes I cannot fully predict. Some days brought setbacks, swelling, or self-doubt. Other days brought breakthroughs, greater ease in my stride, greater spaciousness in my coaching. In both journeys, I have been sustained by vision, discipline, and the steady encouragement of guides and companions.
Ultimately, I have learned that mastery, whether of body or of craft, is less about perfection and more about presence. It is found in the willingness to keep stepping forward, to trust the process, and to celebrate the quiet, almost imperceptible shifts that, over time, carry us to new horizons.
This summer, those horizons became wonderfully tangible. After months of disciplined physical therapy, I bent my new knee past 130 degrees, a milestone I once feared might never come. Almost simultaneously, I submitted my MCC application, another moment born of persistence, practice, and trust. Both achievements remind me that healing and mastery unfold step by step, bend by bend, choice by choice, until one day we realize we have crossed into new terrain, stronger and more whole than before.
With every bend of my new knee and every client conversation, I am reminded that the path to healing and mastery is not found in giant leaps but in the faithful steps that carry us forward into new possibilities, and into the fullest expression of who we are and who we are becoming.
Catherine Finger, Executive Coaching & Consulting
Award-winning coach and multi-certified professional coach Catherine Finger contributes to the well-being of others by offering transformational coaching for leadership, health, and life.
Her passion to instill hope and celebrate beauty, goodness, and truth in the lives of leaders led her to launch her executive coaching and consulting business in 2019. Her years of successful experience as an educational leader, board member, adjunct professor, award-winning author, law enforcement chaplain and community leader equip her with unique insights and deep intuition on both organizations and individuals.
