We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Tabby Biddle a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Tabby , we’re thrilled to have you on our platform and we think there is so much folks can learn from you and your story. Something that matters deeply to us is living a life and leading a career filled with purpose and so let’s start by chatting about how you found your purpose.
I found my purpose to empower and elevate women’s voices and leadership in the world through an unexpected series of events and a deep commitment to listening to my inner voice.
As a young woman, I started my career working in politics and journalism in Washington, D.C. At age 26, an intuitive calling led me to leave my steady job and lifestyle that I had worked hard to build and take a leap into the unknown to backpack travel for nine months in Nepal and Southeast Asia to “find my own rhythm.”
The day after I arrived in Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal, I walked right into a “sign” of what I was doing there. I wasn’t yet 10 minutes into a walk around town, when I encountered a billboard on top of a guest house that said “YOGA” in big, bold letters. When I looked at that sign, my stomach did a somersault, my legs shook, and I heard an internal voice say: So that’s why I’m here.
This moment connected me to the first part of my purpose.
I spent the next nine months travelling through Nepal, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia. During this time, I became deeply immersed not only in the study and practice of yoga (rooted in Hinduism), but also Buddhism.
After returning to the U.S. (New York City), I continued with my study and practice of yoga and Buddhism, received certification to teach English as a Second Language (ESL), and taught English to visiting business professionals at an international school in New York City.
I hadn’t been back yet in the U.S. for six months when I received another intuitive calling to leave my steady job, lifestyle, friends, and family to travel again. This time: to India.
During my previous nine months of backpack travel, I learned to trust my intuition deeply, and so I packed my same big blue backpack (this time a bit more worn and dustier) and flew over to India. I had three destinations where I would stay for two months at a time: Bodhgaya to study Tibetan Buddhism; Rishikesh to study yoga; and Dharamsala, home to the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government-in-exile, to learn more about the Tibetan people and their culture and study Tibetan Buddhism with the Dalai Lama during his annual spring teachings.
During my time with the Tibetans, I fell in love with them and their culture and felt an affinity that I couldn’t explain. Simultaneously, I fell into outrage and despair about the oppression of their religion and culture by the Chinese government and the exile of the Tibetans from their own country that had been going on since the 1950s.
Six months later, when it was time to leave India, I knew I could not leave the Tibetans behind. They were a part of me now. Their stories of beatings, torture and imprisonment just for wanting to preserve their culture and religion were forever embedded in my heart and consciousness. I vowed I would not stay silent about what I had learned from them and about them. I would not stay silent because I knew so many of them were being silenced.
This experience connected me to the second part of my purpose.
After India, I moved to London and worked for the Free Tibet Campaign. I told them I would do whatever they needed – open mail, answer letters, make calls, you name it. I started like this and then, with my journalism background and my passion to amplify the stories of the Tibetans, soon became a contributing writer to their magazine. Not long afterwards, I became the magazine editor. This allowed me to go further in giving voice to the Tibetans, their stories, and their fight for Tibet’s freedom for the rest of the world to hear.
Fast forward 10 years with a move back to New York City, a Master’s degree in Education, a school teaching career, a yoga teaching career, and continued involvement with the Tibetan community, I had another intuitive calling to travel. This time: a move to California.
I heard an internal voice say: New York is too linear for you. You are moving in straight lines. You need somewhere softer, more circular, more feminine.
This message connected me to the third part of my purpose.
Through all my years studying yoga and Tibetan Buddhism (10 years at that point), I had been introduced to a pantheon of goddesses and the concept of feminine energy. The word “yoga” itself can be translated as to unite. Some say the goal of yoga is to unite the mind and body to bring harmony within the individual. Others say the goal is to unite the masculine with the feminine within an individual to bring harmony and wholeness. I believe both are valid and mirror my experience.
To be sure, I learned about goddesses many years earlier in high school during my reading of the Greek myths, but the goddesses I learned about through yoga and Tibetan Buddhism felt different. They were different, and I had a deeper connection to them.
One morning, after my move to California, I woke up in my sunny Santa Monica apartment, and walked over to my closet to change into shorts and a t-shirt to start my day. I pulled out my favorite tank top that had a small peace symbol on it with the words “Don’t Fight” underneath it, and I thought to myself: We should have more shirts like this in the world to promote peace. To my surprise, I heard another voice from within that said: You should make those shirts, Tabby.
Within a few days, I received another intuitive message on this topic: If we’re ever going to achieve peace in the world, we need to create a balance between the masculine and the feminine.
And then another message: It’s time to bring the goddesses out of the ashrams, meditation halls and temples, and into the mainstream.
These insights connected me to the fourth part of my purpose.
Three months later, with a miraculous amount of focus, dedication, and inspiration, I somehow managed to launch a yoga lifestyle clothing line with a mission to awaken women to themselves as a goddess and help women blossom into their potential. The company was called Lotus Blossom Style (the lotus represents the feminine and rebirth), and the shirts were illustrated with goddesses from the yogic tradition and Tibetan Buddhism.
I marketed this clothing line not just to yoga practitioners, but also to mainstream women who were interested in personal growth, wellness, and healthy living. To establish my voice in this area, I began a blog called The Goddess Diaries where I discussed my awakening and to the Goddess and the Divine Feminine, and how this was reshaping my perspective on women’s voices, women’s authority, and women’s leadership.
As I was running my goddess-based business and writing my blog, I had another awakening. I began to wake up to all the human rights abuses happening to women and girls around the world – widespread gender-based violence, human trafficking, denial of healthcare, lack of access to education, economic oppression, lack of representation, food insecurity, and so much more — and I was devastated. At the time, these things were barely being reported on in mainstream media. I vowed that I would use my voice to speak out and write about these abuses on my blog and whatever other media platforms I could, so they were no longer silenced.
This is when I found my voice. My true voice. And I dedicated myself to helping other women find and amplify theirs, too.
Today, my purpose to empower and elevate women’s voices is rooted in the intersection of my journey with yoga, Tibetan Buddhism, feminine spirituality, human rights, social justice, women’s voices and creating peace through women’s leadership. So, as you can see, there were quite a few steps that led to finding my purpose.
Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?
In my work as a women’s leadership coach and consultant, I support ambitious, mission-driven women leaders and emerging leaders to find their voice and amplify it as writers, public speakers and thought leaders to make social impact on the issues they care about most. More specifically, I help women become TEDx speakers, keynote speakers, published authors and essayists, podcast hosts, social justice leaders and mission-driven entrepreneurs. I champion their voices and help them bring their dream leadership projects into fruition, not from the old “pushing” ways of patriarchy that have burned them out, but from a new, more nourishing paradigm of feminine leadership.
Over the last 15 years that I’ve been running my coaching business, what I find most exciting about this work is seeing women step out front as leaders – sharing their viewpoints, their beliefs, their opinions, their vision, and their stories. This is social change.
Regarding women’s leadership, I believe that leadership is innate in every woman and that it’s not something so much that needs to be learned, as much as it needs to be Remembered.
To get more specific about how I work do the work I do, I start by breaking down my client’s project(s) into easy, manageable steps that suit their lifestyle, schedule, learning style, and unique feminine soul to complete their project in a way that feels nourishing to them. I then help them stay organized and accountable to their projects by providing a clear structure and holding a linear progression for them, and at the same time breathe life into the divinity of their feminine voice. As we develop and grow their leadership project(s), I help them overcome any limiting beliefs and fears around expressing themselves in a more visible way by reconnecting them with the value of their voice, their larger life purpose, and the social impact they are here to make.
As one of my clients has said: “Tabby is an extraordinarily unique blend of gentleness, candor, strength, and clear-eyed business practicality. In the most profound way, she wants you to stand in your own strength and for the world to hear you.”
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
I would say that listening to my intuition and inner voice has had the largest impact on my journey. By learning to trust this aspect of myself, I’ve been able to “find my own rhythm” and follow my own path for much of my life. This feels very satisfying and like I’m living on purpose, which is very meaningful to me. I consider my intuition one of my superpowers.
The second quality that has been most impactful on my journey is trust. This ties in with intuition. On my journey, I have been able to trust myself and life’s larger purpose for me. Even in the most challenging times, I’ve trusted that there were lessons for me to learn so I could discover more of myself and grow into who I am meant to be. I believe this has helped me cultivate an optimistic and hopeful perspective.
The third quality that has been most impactful for me is being organized. I am naturally organized in my thinking, which lends a hand to being a strategic thinker when it comes to setting goals and achieving them. When I look at a goal, whether it be for a client or my own projects, I can see the steps that it will take to get there. I don’t often get overwhelmed. I know how to pace myself and my clients so that working on a project feels good on our feminine systems.
My advice to those who are early on in their journey in learning how to listen to their intuition and inner voice is to make sure you spend quiet time with yourself doing something that gets you connected with your body. This could be yoga, gentle stretching, breathing, meditating, dancing, or walking in nature (these are some of my favorites). Your body is where your inner voice lives. Without a connection to your body, it can be difficult to hear your inner voice. Once you intentionally start spending quiet time with yourself and your body, you will begin to hear your inner voice. She has a lot of valuable information to share with you.
How would you describe your ideal client?
My ideal client is a purpose-driven, female leader or emerging leader who cares about the human rights, equality, representation and well-being of women and girls. She wants to use her voice and her leadership to empower and inspire other women and/or girls and be a leader of social change. This woman is ambitious, committed to personal and professional growth, and is motivated to be a leader. She may, at times, doubt her voice and question, Who am I to say this? Or, Who am I to do this? but she knows deep in heart that she is meant to be a leader of social change.
She also may have some fears around visibility and being seen in a bigger light and/or on a bigger platform and is looking for a coach to guide her through to the other side. She also may have issues with accountability and pacing herself so that she can complete her projects. She is looking for a coach who can set goals with her and keep her accountable to those goals so she can be the leader she came here to be. In the past, my ideal client may have leaned heavily on her masculine skills and traits to advance in her leadership, but now she is awakening to the power of the feminine. She is tired of the old ways of hierarchy, hustle, and burnout, and is interested in a new way of doing business and being in her leadership. My ideal client desires to live a meaningful life, living on purpose.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.tabbybiddle.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tabby_biddle/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tabbybiddle/
Image Credits
Top Photo + Bottom Photo: Margie Woods Photography Additional Photography: Meredith Yinger, She TV Media (video camera)
