Writing your Next Brave Chapter
Photo by Lisa Kleinhofer
People, media, corporations, governments - there is no shortage of avenues for society to tell us how to live. And yet there comes a time: mid-life, a toxic work environment, a company layoff, a health crisis, a significant life moment that knocks us off course and forces us to reconsider the train we’ve been riding on for the past several years. And then what? It seems so much easier to just follow the roadmap handed to us at birth and follow along, until it simply isn’t.
For me, my roadmap was to be a good student, get a scholarship, complete a four-year college degree, and start a full-time social impact job. So, I was an A student who received a leadership scholarship to a prestigious private liberal arts college and then launched my career as a ninth grade English teacher at the ripe old age of 21. I made little career tweaks along the way - becoming an instructional coach, joining the school reform movement in Los Angeles, working nationally to improve the public education system. Eventually I became an Assistant Superintendent and then an EdTech nonprofit start-up founder. But after the birth of my youngest child, I experienced intense postpartum and was forced to stop barreling forward. When I was finally able to pick my head up again and look around at my three children under three-years old, my high-powered and high-stress leadership position, I realized that I was losing my sense of self and I needed to pump the brakes. I quite literally needed to catch my breath. Besides work, who was I? What did I enjoy doing? How did I like to spend my time? What really mattered to me? Was this the life of my dreams? It’s easy to say that because I was involved in mission-driven work, I was living a life of purpose but in reality I was totally, completely burned out. I thought success was my job, my position, my salary. But I was wrong.
Through a series of blogs, I am going to write about the new roads I took to regain my sense of self and my journey to what Abraham Maslow calls “self-actualization”. I have found that there are not nearly enough working moms of young children who are sharing their paths to living a fulfilled life. Instead, I see a lot of fabulous single women, women with partners and no kids, or women with partners and older children writing and documenting their successes and while they sound amazing, I cannot relate to them, at all. I am combating the fact that my youngest child still crawls into our bed at some point in the middle of the night. Every single day, I have to remind my kids to sit at the dinner table for the entire meal, to brush their teeth, and to please hold my hand when walking across the street. My life is a mix of me wanting to dream up a richer life for all of us, and the daily exhausting reality of raising three young children. I’m running on low fuel most days.
But about four years ago, mid-life hit me hard and a global pandemic. Many mornings I would wake up feeling restless, annoyed, fearful, and trapped. I was losing my sense of community and myself at the same time. And since we were living through a once in a lifetime pandemic, my roadmap no longer provided any meaningful direction. If I was going to make a change and control my destiny, I had to be the one to create a new roadmap. So, I began a series of tiny experiments, introducing new little habits since I didn’t have the time to make big sweeping changes. I thought if I could make a little progress each day, something new might reveal itself. Now, after much reflection and many minor adjustments to my daily schedule, I am making sense of my learnings and sharing them with you in hopes of fostering community and providing some new sense-making in this wild world. My goal is that through my writing and storytelling, you feel less alone and maybe you feel brave to take steps, however small, toward building and cultivating the life of your dreams.
Over several weeks, I’ll delve into each of my learnings but for now here’s a quick preview:
In 2020, I learned how to disconnect from my career and establish real work and personal boundaries.
In 2021, I focused on my recovery from many years in a toxic work culture and rediscovered my sense of self-worth and capabilities.
In 2022, I focused on my physical health, learning about the foods that my changing body needed and came to terms with those it rejected. I also learned about exercise as a vital tool for my own productivity.
In 2023, I buckled down on my financial health, learning how to build wealth and create a work optional life.
Now, in 2024, I’m focused on my creative health and what it means to achieve self-actualization.
What I am learning, and you might already know, is that all of these areas of focus are not just one and done with each year passing. But as a result of spending a lot of time launching each of these balls into the air, it’s much easier now for me to pop one back up when it accidentally falls; I’m human after all.
If you are thinking about your own career transition, please reach out to me. I can help!
