Meet Talia Gutin

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Talia Gutin. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Talia below.

Alright, so we’re so thrilled to have Talia with us today – welcome and maybe we can jump right into it with a question about one of your qualities that we most admire. How did you develop your work ethic? Where do you think you get it from?

It all comes back to values for me. Having a clear understanding of my core values and the meaningful goals that arise from them drives my work ethic and self-discipline. I also thrive on being internally challenged in a significant way. The external achievement itself is less fulfilling and a lot less interesting than the challenge I face to get there. It’s in the challenge where true growth happens—the unlocking of potential and the journey of self-discovery.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

I’m a certified Life Coach (PCC), writer, and mother of two (soon to be three!). I’m thrilled to announce that my poetry book, The Mother Self, will be published on May 6th, 2025. The collection, written during my first year postpartum, delves into the joys and challenges, growth and grief, and the beauty and pain of early motherhood. To celebrate, I’ll be hosting a book launch and poetry reading at Trident Bookstore in Boulder on the evening of May 6th.

Alongside my writing, I lead both local and online groups for mothers, creating spaces for women to come together, reflect, and share their experiences of early motherhood. Many of the themes in The Mother Self also form the foundation for these group programs.

As a Life Coach, I guide individuals, couples, and groups on their paths toward emotional and mental wellness. My work centers around helping clients cultivate authenticity and self-awareness, particularly within their relationships. I focus on identifying and healing unhelpful patterns from clients’ family of origin, empowering them to break free from repetitive cycles that no longer serve them. Ultimately, my goal is to help people restore a sense of wholeness, both internally and externally, so they can live in alignment with their truest values.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

The three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that have been most impactful on my journey are self-awareness, reading great works of literature, and my capacity for solitude.

Many of us begin our journeys by asking, ‘What do I want to do?’ But I believe the far more important question is, ‘Who am I?’ Everything starts from that inquiry. When we have a deep internal understanding of who we are, the external ‘answers’ tend to become much clearer.

Reading literature in my late teens and early twenties was profoundly formative for me. Through books, I discovered the complexities of the human condition—beauty, pain, suffering, and the full spectrum of human experience. Literature opened my heart, activated my mind, and ignited my soul. It was also deeply meditative and became a gateway to solitude.

My ability to be alone with myself, and to truly enjoy my own company (though solitude can be challenging at times), has served as an anchor throughout my life. Solitude, for me, is intentional time spent alone that allows us to reconnect with who we are, free from the pressures and expectations of the outside world. In today’s technology-driven, social media-heavy landscape, cultivating this practice of intentional solitude is more important than ever. It’s a vital space for reflection, emotional processing, and rediscovery, helping us stay grounded in who we are.

Thanks so much for sharing all these insights with us today. Before we go, is there a book that’s played in important role in your development?

Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke had a profound impact on me. Rilke encourages us to dive deeper into ourselves, to create and live from that innermost place, rather than seeking validation or paying too much attention to external commentary, critique, or criticism. He suggests that solitude is home—a safe, grounding place where we can reconnect with our internal center. I also resonate deeply with his perspective on living the questions of life, rather than rushing to find answers. Rilke writes, “I beg you, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them.” This is something I strive to embody in my own life.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.taliagutin.com
• Instagram: @taliagutin

Image Credits

Kate Eleniak