Michelle Cumberbatch aims to coach...
with the man who was also married but separated from his wife.
“He came into my life and turned it upside down. He was a lot. When I tell you I was out of my league, I was out of my league. I just fell and I fell hard…,” she recalled.
From that experience, Cumberbatch said, she has learnt that no one should be so intimately involved with a man who is not her partner and they also should not communicate on such a level because it will place them in jeopardy as the man becomes a comforter.
“I literally started to wait for his call instead of my husband’s because he could have fulfilled the things that had nothing to do with sex…,” she shared.
They eventually started living together and she got pregnant. Four years after both their divorces were finalised, they got married.
With her new husband, Cumberbatch said, she realised, “I didn’t know anything. I found myself quite a bit insecure, quite a bit trying to measure up, quite a bit trying to compete with my own demons. I say my own demons because I knew how we got together so that was always at the back of my mind.”
There was infidelity in the marriage, which she said made it worse for her and when she couldn’t cope anymore and she was at a crusade one weekend weeping, she got baptised.
“I gave my life to Christ and started the journey of discovering who I was. I found the power of actually literally finally knowing who I was authentically and saw the value of how it made a huge difference in my life…,” she said
Finding Christ straightened how Cumberbatch functioned. She was no longer the same person and her marriage improved.
Before becoming a relationship coach, Cumberbatch said, she helped to run the family’s retail stores and also worked for the Chick-fil-A chain as a culture ambassador and human resources manager; the latter position saw her listening not only to employees but also to directors.
In 2017, she decided to register Our Life’s Moments as a business, even though initially she was not clear on its form. It was not until 2019 that she went fully into running the business. It was scary at first, as she admitted that what she teaches women in most cases is different from most coaches and initially she questioned whether she was doing the right thing.
“I don’t teach the bible but I do not avoid it because without the actual understanding of it and how it actually syncs with you, I feel there is a gap,” she said adding that she cares about the women who understand what she is saying.
Guyana
Cumberbatch’s work in Guyana started by chance when she was invited to have a chat with a few women while visiting. Initially, she thought she would have been standing on the road corner but she was invited into a church where she addressed a number of women for hours, with them sharing. The next day she was invited again and this drove her to convene a free seminar; by the end of the month she had four clients. More clients came and now 70% of her business is in Guyana and the Caribbean.
In Guyana, Cumberbatch said, most of the women she has met, she goes back to teaching them to first love themselves before working on relationships. She said as well a lot of Guyanese women have turned to YouTube for information and while she is not against this process as there is a wealth of information, the problem arises when they are unsure how to make it applicable to their lives. In some cases they don’t realise but utilising the information they actually make their partner more insecure and instead of helping the relationship they make it worse.
Cumberbatch said she helps them to apply what they have learnt and locally she has dropped the prices for her services in an attempt to help more women. She is now incorporating men in her programme in Guyana.
“There is nothing else, nothing else, nothing else. You could give me ten million. I don’t want it. I am serving my almighty…,” Cumberbatch said, when asked if she has found her niche. For her, serving women in Guyana and other Caribbean countries is paramount even though she will make more money if her business is centred in the US.
She has commenced coaching others, she said, as she needs people to help her make a change to see a better society in Guyana.