“I got a sense of breathing for the first time,” said a dynamic woman whom I interviewed early on for Novofemina’s Voices of Transition column. Prior to being laid off she was a multi-decade employee of a large corporation. She was also the parent of several children, one of whom she lost to a rare childhood illness. She got herself another job within a year of her termination. She described her transition as enlivening. She was energetic and peaceful when we spoke. I will never forget how I felt as I listened to her tell me her story. Awful might be an exaggeration – but not much of one. I remember thinking, ‘how did I ever get myself in this predicament?’ Her confident, delighted state seemed a million miles away from where I sat.
The QUESTION
“Please pull out a piece of paper,” so started my facilitation of a career event sponsored by the Emerging Leaders Program at the University of Massachusetts Boston. I asked each participant to write down what their professional aspirations were – using a 5 year time frame. We spent the next twenty minutes discussing what folks had jotted down. What happened next amazed me. Continue reading…
What does NovoFemina Mean?
Novofemina.com is a blog about professional and personal transition issues in women’s lives. Novofemina is derived from Latin words meaning “women’s renewal.” It’s constructed from two latin words; novo and femina. Novo’s latin definition is “to make new; to renew; to change; to re-invent.” Femina is the latin word for “woman.” Continue reading…