Coach Marina

01/01/2026

Riveting movies 🎥 I watched while traveling ✈️ in 2025.
My time to catch great movies is on planes.

🎬 Movies
• The Ballad of Wallis Island — Quiet, eccentric, and tender; a meditation on solitude and unexpected beauty.
• The Wedding Banquet — Love, identity, and family expectations held with humor and compassion.
• Magazine Dreams — Raw and unsettling; a portrait of longing, masculinity, and the ache of invisibility.
• The Last Showgirl — Aging, desire, and dignity beneath lights that don’t last forever.
• The Assessment — Chilling and intimate; what happens when love and worth are measured and approved.
• Exhibiting Forgiveness — A slow, honest exploration of harm, repair, and the complexity of forgiveness.
• Friendship — Awkward, human, and quietly profound in its look at adult connection.
• Philomena — Devastating and beautiful; love, loss, and the long arc of truth.

📺 Favorite Shows of 2025
• Loot — Healing, wealth, and purpose told with humor and heart; reinvention without pretense.
• Shrinking — Grief, repair, and friendship with sharp edges and deep tenderness.
• The Morning Show — Power, ethics, ambition, and truth in all their messy, human contradictions.

What were your favorite movies this year?

01/01/2026

Al cerrar este año, me encuentro menos interesada en contar logros y más atenta a notar lo que me ha moldeado.

Fue un año de habitar muchos roles a la vez—líder, coach, pareja, hija, madre, aprendiz. Un año de presentarme en espacios donde se necesitaba claridad y en momentos silenciosos donde la ternura importaba más que las respuestas.

En lo profesional, profundicé mi compromiso con un trabajo relacional, reflexivo y arraigado en la dignidad. Acompañé a educadoras, familias y líderes no desde soluciones rápidas, sino desde la pausa—creando espacio para el sentido, la responsabilidad y el crecimiento. Una y otra vez recordé que el cambio real no nace de la urgencia, sino de la confianza.

En lo personal, este año me pidió honestidad.
Sobre la energía.
Sobre los límites.
Sobre el amor.

Me invitó a practicar la fuerza de maneras más suaves—eligiendo descanso, eligiendo presencia, eligiendo permanecer en relación incluso cuando retirarme parecía más fácil. Fui testigo de la resiliencia de mi familia de cerca, y eso me transformó.

Hubo momentos de duelo, momentos de celebración y muchos momentos intermedios—de esos que no hacen ruido, pero que reconfiguran silenciosamente nuestra estructura interna. Salgo de este año con más humildad, más claridad y una reverencia más profunda por el proceso de devenir.

Hoy marco este día como ritual.

No como un final, sino como un umbral.

Un día para notar—
lo que me fortaleció,
lo que me suavizó,
lo que está listo para soltarse.

Y un día para elegir—
lo que llevo conmigo,
lo que voy a cuidar,
lo que voy a proteger.

Este es un día de acompañamiento.
De estar con los seres queridos.
De comidas compartidas, silencios compartidos, memorias compartidas.
De honrar los ciclos que nos sostuvieron—visibles e invisibles.

Sin resoluciones.
Sin prisa.
Solo presencia, gratitud e intención.

Al mirar hacia el año que viene, mi intención es sencilla:
Seguir liderando con integridad.
Mantener la curiosidad viva.
Honrar la comunidad.
Y recordar que el crecimiento no siempre es ruidoso—pero siempre es honesto.

Si resuena contigo, te invito a pausar hoy.
A notar.
A elegir.
Y a cruzar este umbral en relación.

Con gratitud—por las personas, las lecciones y las pausas.

01/01/2026

As this year comes to a close, I find myself less interested in tallying accomplishments and more drawn to noticing what shaped me.

This was a year of holding many roles at once—leader, coach, partner, daughter, mother, learner. A year of showing up in rooms where clarity was needed and in quiet moments where tenderness mattered more than answers.

Professionally, I deepened my commitment to work that is relational, reflective, and rooted in dignity. I supported educators, families, and leaders not by offering quick fixes, but by slowing things down—creating space for meaning, accountability, and growth. I was reminded again and again that real change doesn’t happen through urgency alone; it happens through trust.

Personally, this year asked for honesty.
About energy.
About limits.
About love.

It asked me to practice willpower in softer ways—choosing rest, choosing presence, choosing to stay in relationship even when it would have been easier to retreat. I witnessed resilience up close in my family, and it changed me.

There were moments of grief, moments of celebration, and many moments in between—the kind that don’t make headlines but quietly re-shape your inner architecture. I am leaving this year with more humility, more clarity, and a deeper reverence for the work of becoming.

Today, I am marking this moment as ritual.

Not as an ending, but as a threshold.

A day of noticing—
what strengthened me,
what softened me,
what is ready to be released.

And a day of choosing—
what I will carry forward,
what I will tend,
what I will protect.

This is a day of accompaniment.
Of being with loved ones.
Of shared meals, shared silence, shared remembering.
Of honoring the cycles that held us—seen and unseen.

No resolutions.
No urgency.
Just presence, gratitude, and intention.

As I look toward the year ahead, my intention is simple:
To continue leading with integrity.
To stay curious.
To honor community.
And to remember that growth is not always loud—but it is always honest.

If this resonates, I invite you to pause today.
To notice.
To choose.
And to cross this threshold in relationship—with self and others.

With gratitude—for the people, the lessons, and the pauses.

25/12/2025

Kids may be drawn to fun, but they stay where they feel safe, seen, and loved. ❤️
Create a home that gives them both.

22/12/2025

I didn’t grow up in a house full of books.
No bedtime stories. No shelves overflowing.
My mother read, sí—but she read to herself, quietly, in the few pauses life allowed her.
Not because she didn’t want to read to us… she just didn’t know that was a thing parents did.

That was the story for many of us.

So I became an adult reader as an adult.
Not a child who grew into a bookworm, but a grown woman teaching herself how to love reading—slowly, intentionally, in between all the life I’m carrying.

And I’ll be honest:
I don’t finish 20 books a year.
Sometimes it takes me three months to get through one.
But I finish it.
I move at the pace my nervous system, my life, and my lineage allow.

And that, to me, is its own kind of literacy:
persistence, presence, and re-existing beyond what we inherited.

I’m sharing this because many of us grew up in homes where reading wasn’t modeled, encouraged, or even possible.
And still, we can become readers—at any age, in our own rhythm, in ways that honor who we are and where we come from.

If you’re a late-in-life reader like me: you’re not behind.
You’re reclaiming something that was never offered to you.
You’re breaking a cycle.
You’re becoming the story your younger self never got to hear.

And that counts.
Deeply.

20/12/2025

Thankful for earths calming and natural beauties.

11/12/2025

Viewing a child through a new lens allows us to see a new child. 💗

03/12/2025

01/12/2025

Last Monday, I completed All Our Kin first ever 3Rs en Español with a circle of family child care educator leaders—and it was an experience like no other. In our virtual space, something tender and powerful happened.

These mujeres—educators, mothers, leaders, mentors—took a breath and turned inward. They reflected on who they are, the identities they carry, their attachment patterns, relational legacies, cultural histories, and the human sensitivities that shape how they show up in community.

They wove their personal stories with their professional purpose.
They validated the framework with their lived wisdom.

They held each other with clarity, humor, and abiding presence.
And each one walked away more conscious—more aware of self and others—grounded in a deeper understanding of how relationships truly transform practice.
I think I was so moved because working directly with educators feels like home to me. And also—they are it. They are the heartbeat. They are the ones translating theory into care every single day. They are the stewards of children, families, and by extension, entire communities.

To witness them make meaning in Spanish, in their own voices, in ways that honor their fullness, that honor the language of their heart—eso fue un regalo. 🎁

The 3Rs—Relational, Responsive and Reflective coaching approaches—come alive when educators see themselves not as recipients of a model, but as carriers of generational wisdom. Last Monday reaffirmed what is already true: their leadership is not a revelation—it’s a remembering. 💫

I am humbled and honored to be the holder of this gathering.

I authored the 3Rs with deep love and knowing in my role as Mentor Coach in TA at All Our Kin. The 3Rs are rooted in and informed by 25 years of work directly in partnership with educators and grounded in relational and coaching research.

03/08/2025

Feeling deeply grateful after two unforgettable days in New Mexico, facilitating The 3Rs: Grounding Your Coaching in Relational, Responsive, and Reflective Approaches.

This gathering became a healing space—held by the enchanted land, woven together by stories of resilience, forced migration, overcoming harm, and stepping into power.

Thank you to All Our Kin and Growing Up New Mexico for prioritizing the wellbeing of family child care educators—and those who support them—by making space for growth, reflection, and healing. It is not lost on me how rare and necessary this kind of space is in our sector.

When we center humanity in our coaching, we don’t just build skills—we build trust, community, and transformation.

11/07/2025

In an era of information overload our souls crave embodiment.