How Change Led to My Journey of Hope & (Re)invention
This time last year, I was lying on my couch in the fetal position. I’d endured the 2 most awful years of my life where every element of my adult identity had been stripped away. I felt broken. Exhausted. Unmotivated. And overwhelmingly, heartbreakingly sad. (According to Brené Brown’s book, Atlas of the Heart, I think my emotional state was probably best described as anguish, but you get the picture.)
I was at the point where I didn’t want to keep waking up to the constant reminders of all that I had lost. I. Just. Couldn’t. Take. It. Anymore.
My journey into anguish and despair started in January 2020, when I received news that my job was being eliminated after a merger. Up to that point, I had successfully practiced as an in-house health care regulatory attorney for almost 15 years. Being a lawyer was a HUGE part of my identity personally and professionally, and I grieved the loss of my job like a death. It didn’t help matters that my official separation from the company in March 2020 also meant that I would be separated from the many colleagues and business partners whom I’d come to know as friends—all at the same time the world was shutting down and extreme isolation was taking hold due to the quickly escalating COVID-19 pandemic.
Much earlier in my career, I suspected that I might one day leave the practice of law. In spite of that idea having germinated for many years, in the months that followed my job loss, I was in a constant battle between embracing the opportunity to start afresh and the loss of my identity. Through a lot of self-reflection, I had compiled a very long list of inputs: my values, my strengths, the things I enjoyed about my job, the type of impact I wanted, and the community I wanted to surround myself with. But I couldn’t piece together the inputs in a coherent puzzle.
I networked with countless individuals: some in the health care space, others who had endured their own career pivot, and many people in consulting. (Shout out to those who gave me the time of day during a very stressful time in EVERYONE’S lives. I am forever grateful for the friendships and connections that developed out of this process.) After all this reflection and networking, I was buoyed by lots of encouragement, but I didn’t have any more clarity about what “I wanted to be when I grew up,” and I couldn’t find anyone who was doing something that made me say, “I TOTALLY want to do that, too!”
While my professional identity crisis was unfolding, I decided to resume therapy with an amazing therapist. I’d been in therapy in the past, so I already knew what my triggers were and the circumstances from my life that cause me to react to situations the way I do. But something was different about this therapist. In the process of learning to (re)connect to myself and my voice, I also learned how certain styles of communication can build connection, while other communication styles can drive an even bigger wedge into a relationship—ANY relationship.
By Fall 2020, I knew the next phase of my career would involve four things: a way to combine my learnings about communication with my passions for helping people grow, developing positive company culture, and connection. But I still didn’t have a direction for making that happen or a vision for what my work would look like. Out of frustration, I eventually enlisted the assistance of an executive coach. In the first 2 months working with my coach, I continued to collect more inputs for my analysis: what’s my “Why,” what qualities in my work are non-negotiable, my primary areas of interest, etc. But the complete picture still eluded me.
It wasn’t until the last month of my time with my coach—almost a year to the day after I had left my job—that my “Eureka!” moment hit. (You can read more about it in my first ever blog.) My vision coalesced around the relationship between communication, connection, burnout, and change management (and particularly the lessons I’d learned in therapy about the role #emotions play in each of these aspects of work and life). Despite all my reservations and doubts, my months of analysis and reflection had finally revealed that I did, in fact, want to start my own business as a #culturetransformation consultant. And so, in April 2021, (re)connect consulting, llc was born with the mission of helping leaders and teams overcome obstacles with the power of human connection!
Little did I know, right as my professional life was starting to rebound, my personal life began to fall apart. Shortly after founding my company, I experienced 3 earth-shattering losses in a period of 3 months that relegated me to the fetal position on my couch.
In July 2021, my mother died unexpectedly.
In August 2021, I made the very difficult decision to end a very important personal relationship.
In September 2021, my beloved dog crossed over the Rainbow Bridge after a sudden and brief battle with aggressive bone cancer.
To add insult to injury, in December 2021, I was hit by a car while walking through a parking lot. W.T.F. (Fortunately, I had no serious injuries.)
As I reported in a LinkedIn post, up to the point of my dog dying, I had been muddling along in my grief of the other losses. But saying goodbye to my dog absolutely broke me. He had brought me so much joy over the years and was my last resort for comfort. After he died, the life was sucked out of me, and I felt as though I had nothing else to loose.
As much as I wanted to continue on with (re)connect consulting, I knew I didn’t have the energy to do so. I made the difficult decision to put (re)connect on pause. Through the end of 2021, I fulfilled commitments that resulted from the seeds I’d sown before my mom’s death. But I didn’t take on any new work, and I halted all marketing and business development activities for the foreseeable future. On the days when I couldn’t muster the strength to sit upright (and there were MANY), I laid on the couch in the fetal position, unable to do anything more than numb myself by staring at any TV show I could find on Netflix that didn’t require energy or intellectual processing. The only thing that drove me to get out of bed every day and kept me going during that time was the unwavering support and connection to loved ones who called and texted and provided me with food on the regular. I cannot thank them enough for their love and support—you know who you are.
In October 2021, I had the opportunity to attend a retreat in southwestern Utah, hosted by the executive coach who had helped me arrive at the vision for (re)connect consulting. The retreat was held about 2 weeks after my dog died, so my memory of the whole retreat is fuzzy. I remember crying my eyes out for several days surrounded by the red rocks and a group of other women who were going through transitions of their own, some personal, some professional, and some as profound and deep as my own transition.
When I returned to Chicago after the retreat, I couldn’t deny I felt… Different? I had somehow developed this overwhelming urge to be in nature, and all I could think about was packing up my car and going on the open road. Flying by the seat of my pants for the first time in 40+ years. To this day, I still can’t explain that calling, but it consumed me.
Over the winter months, I began the painstaking process of rehabbing my injury from the car accident, selling my condo, putting all my personal belongings into storage, and planning for this trip of… Wandering? Healing? Self-discovery? By April 2022, the condo in Chicago had finally sold, and I bid farewell to the community I had come to so heavily rely on in my darkest moments. It was definitely bittersweet. I was sad to leave my community, but with every mile that I distanced myself from Chicago, I felt buoyed by hope. By promise. By the prospect of what could be.
For 8 months, I traveled the US by myself. During that time, I logged more than 27,000 miles. I drove through 24 states and hiked to the point where I gave myself a nasty case of tendinitis. I cried. I wrote. I played with dogs. I spent time exploring the 26 cities I visited. I saw friends and loved ones. And I cried a whole lot more.
Along the way, I started to (re)connect with myself again. I started to listen to what my body wanted. I also started seeking out new connections in some of the places I visited. I slowly started to spend more time on (re)connect consulting, and I engaged a few new clients.
I battled uncertainty. I battled loneliness. I battled exhaustion. But through every step, I found a community on LinkedIn who was eager to read updates on my travel, my experiences, and the things I had been learning along the way.
Toward the tail end of my wellness journey, I began to realize that my vision for (re)connect consulting had shifted. While I still wanted to work with leaders and teams to build connection, I saw other opportunities to expand my reach and began taking classes toward certifications in coaching and mediation. I had been getting a lot of inquiries about coaching, and the idea of working one-on-one with people in transition was really exciting. And mediation felt like a natural extension of my interests in communication and connection, but with a conflict resolution slant. So I went where the universe seemed to be leading me.
After my 8 months of travel, I knew it was time to rest. The constant travel had begun to wear on me, and I needed to feel stable, or as stable as I could be in light of the massive amounts of change I’d endured. So I decided to settle in Denver for a few months to take advantage of all the outdoor winter activities the city and surrounding region have to offer.
Right before I began my travels, I had a conversation with a friend about my goals for my trip. She asked me a question that I couldn’t answer at the time, but I hoped would come to me while I traveled. I’ve thought about it often over the last several months, and the answer is slowing crystallizing in my mind.
Her question was this: how will you incorporate the personal lessons you learn on this trip into your consulting business and make those lessons relevant to companies that desire to transform their company cultures in the midst of change?
At the time she posed this question to me, the best guess I could muster was that my story of resilience while enduring significant personal and professional change could be a guide for leaders, teams, and individuals struggling with their own challenges.
Months later, I think I'm on the right track with my initial answer. But I also think there’s a bigger mission at hand. I want to teach leaders and teams the communication techniques that help them (re)connect and build the foundation for a strong company culture. And I want to be a source of support for people facing major transition. I want to challenge the insidious myth that we have to be perfect at home and at work, that we must figuratively check our feelings at the door and kowtow to the weight of all the "shoulds" in our lives. I want to champion those who embrace their whole (sometimes messy) selves in all aspects of their personal and professional lives. Because when we start showing all the parts of ourselves to others at home and at work, it has the power to transform our relationships. And that’s the stuff of transformative cultures and transformative lives.
Through my travels, I gained a greater appreciation for the value of (re)connecting to myself and tuning in to what it is that I need and what drives me. Through my coaching work with clients, I’ve been able to help others accomplish the same. And through my consulting and mediation work, I’ve seen how our ability to connect with others and how our use of certain communication styles can create an environment of psychological safety that is critical for conflict resolution and change management at work.
Reflecting back on the past 2 years, I’ve come to know several things:
I know loss.
I know suffering.
I know uncertainty.
I know loneliness.
I know change (I view myself as an expert at this point).
But I also know:
Healing.
The importance of connection.
The power of (re)connecting to your own voice.
The strength derived from (re)connected teams.
The importance of being heard.
As I sit here a year later, upright and functioning as a human on most days, I’m emboldened by the idea that there is a better way to engage… With ourselves. With our colleagues. With all the relationships in our lives. And while the past several years have been grueling, it has led me to the place where I can hold space in earnest for leaders, teams, and individuals who are navigating their own challenges and transitions. By sharing my story of hope and reinvention, perhaps those reading it will be encouraged to seek out their own resources to keep fighting and (re)connect to themselves and others.
