linda rossetti – Women and Transition

Strengthening Our Resolve

“I can hear my voice,” shared a teary-eyed women who introduced herself to me last week at the conclusion of a seminar I conducted in a leafy suburb on the outskirts of Boston. “It is screaming at me,” she said. She went on to tell me about how emotional she’d been throughout the seminar – a two-hour affair designed to let participants play with the concepts of transition. She was clear about the action she needed to take. She knew it. It didn’t eliminate the sheer terror she felt as she contemplated taking that next step. Her comment instantly deposited me at the doorstep of actions. In this season of New Year’s resolutions and renewed personal commitments – are you readying to act? Continue reading…

Our Script

“What if I want to work at the cheese counter at Whole Foods?” asked a women of me earlier this week after a speaking engagement that I did to promote my book, Women & Transition. She was the parent of a toddler and someone for whom Whole Foods would never have been an option prior to childbirth. I’d describe her as a type-A achiever who was asking important questions of herself. Did I hear frustration in her voice? Resignation? She seemed to be toggling back and forth between a new identity and one more firmly entrenched. My suspicion was that the newer one had already introduced her to unfamiliar waypoints and some unusual reactions from others. Continue reading…

Does Transition Matter?

“What a great gift this is,” said a woman from Southern CA referring to my book. “You have so carefully and thoughtfully given voice and structure to an issue that millions of women and some men face throughout their lives.” I was humbled by her remarks. We were debriefing after a seminar I hosted on women and transition. It was the first time that I’d presented to an unfamiliar audience. A truly unbiased test. The generosity and kindness of her words reminded me of the most basic question I always come back to….

Does transition matter?

Before I answer that question let me remind you about why I investigated it in the first place. I found myself at forty-five not knowing the answer to some key questions for the first time in my adult life. Questions like ‘What did I want to do?’ or more importantly, ‘What really mattered to me?’ I had a storied career up until that moment – Harvard MBA, tech start-up ceo, c-suite executive, and mom. The latter was added right around my fortieth birthday – two children within sixteen months of each other.

As my children moved beyond baby carriers the conflicts between my various worlds took on epic proportions. I learned to function – or so I thought – in a state of sustained exhaustion. Thankfully within this operating fog I had an instinct, an instinct that something more was possible for me.

Have you ever felt the same?

At that moment I was racked with emotions. I felt guilty for not working sixty hours a week like my ‘successful’ peers. I was ashamed because I couldn’t answer the question, ‘what’s next for you, Linda?’ I was shocked by the way society wanted to instantly marginalize me. One long time friend’s comment sticks with me. Upon learning that I’d temporarily stepped away from my crazy c-suite existence she said, “You – of all people.”

Distance from those early days – and a fair amount of research – has led me to understand more about the transition triggered by my own unraveling.

Transition can occur at any age in either gender. A person has the potential to repeatedly transition over the course of their life.
Even with this potential, transition is widely misunderstood in our society. So too, the skill sets required to navigate it are underdeveloped.
Without awareness of transition women often interpret the early signals of transition incorrectly. We read them as ‘failure’ instead of ‘growth.’ If left unchecked, this mismatch can lead to feelings of inadequacy or self-doubt – and all sorts of conclusions that can lead us to stall, disengage or retreat from living the lives we imagine.
An understanding of transition is super important for women. More than 90% of women I surveyed expected to transition again within five years.

Combining this frequency with a lack of awareness and underdeveloped skills – it is no wonder I felt that way I did.

I’ve learned that transition is a process that we choose when faced with the need to change in our lives. Some people choose transition. Many others do not. For those who choose it, transition requires us to re-examine our assumptions about identity, capacity and values.

At its core transition asks us to dignify that which has value and meaning to us. One woman whose transition was triggered by a wrenching personal tragedy summarized her transition with, “I felt as if I could breath for the first time.”

Does transition matter?

I know it does. For me it gave me two perspectives. First, an understanding of transition gave me critical context. It allowed me to interpret what was going on for me. With it I was less buffeted by the emotions. It was a steady anchor – this understanding.

It also gave me a roadmap – a playbook – for unchartered territory. Even though I was walking forward into uncertainty I was less unglued about not knowing. I could trust the process. It offered vocabulary and context and sight lines.

I’ve come to believe that an awareness and understanding of transition is an invaluable gift of strength in an uncertain time.

Where do you stand? Does transition matter?

The shame of should

A grad school classmate of mine and I were at dinner last week with another friend, Tricia, who had an undergraduate degree from UPenn. Tricia mentioned that she’d recently attended an informal get together for women from her graduating class. She’s been out of school just over twenty years. “Shame” she offered in summary of the get together – immediately capturing our full attention. “Many women weren’t doing anything because they were ashamed that they hadn’t done more since leaving school.” I understood her remarks to mean that negative self judgment played an enormous role for many of these women. It impacted their choices and their beliefs about success or failure because they hadn’t done what they ‘should’ have done. Wow. This discussion left me wondering, what role shame? Continue reading…

The courage of starting…

“I don’t know if I told you,” shared a friend, “but I left my job.” It was my son’s first day of school. Chaos swirled around me. Kids. Parents. The occasional dog. A forgotten backpack. Above the din my friend’s tone was mildly apologetic. While I saw a little sparkle in the corner of her eye, something weighed heavily on her. Was it fear that I saw? Shame? Continue reading…

A moment….

I caught it out of the corner of my eye. It was a flash. I might have missed it had I looked the other way. I was multi-tasking – like so many of us do. I’d just finished work and was in the process of dropping my twelve-year-old daughter off at a baseball game. This summer she was a bat kid for the Orleans Firebirds, the season’s leading team in the storied Cape Cod Baseball League. In this league college athletes are invited to play for one of ten teams while Major League Baseball (MLB) scouts hover on the periphery with offer letters in hand. In the moment, my daughter got out of the car and skipped her way to the dugout. Happy. Energetic. Anticipating acceptance and success in every facet of the hours that stretched ahead of her. Continue reading…

Choice or Compromise?

I’ll never forget an interview I did for my book….. One afternoon a mid-forties woman who had three sons joined me for coffee in an artsy bakery in Pasadena, CA. She agreed to talk with me about her transition, triggered by an empty nest. Shortly after we began we unexpectedly turned our focus to an earlier transition, her decision to leave the workforce. She offered, “there was a lot of pressure on me to buy into the concept of being a full-time mother.” Her husband and her in-laws voiced strong opposition to her continuing to work. Financially she and her husband thought they could get by on one salary. Neither of her own parents were living. She said of her experience, “I was the guilty party for wanting to pursue my work. It was a particularly difficult time.” Continue reading…

The right posture…

Do you lean in or lean out? It is a question that many of us have thought about thanks to the March 2013 publication of Lean In. That book asked women to engage themselves more fully – to lean in – albeit in a largely corporate vein. While interesting to consider, I’ve found another more important posture that women not only need to be aware of – they need to defy. I call it the failure posture. Continue reading…

A Transition Solstice Celebration…

Who wouldn’t give their right arm for more hours in the day? When faced with the prospect of newly available time, most of us instantly think about what we could do. The possibilities are endless. Think about it. An important ‘to do’ for work. A laundry list of actions in support of children, spouses, or dependent elders. A few minutes for long deferred personal care or even a personal interest. Maybe even a few moments dedicated to a long overdue job search. What would you do with ‘found time?’ Would wishing make it to your list?

Time was on my mind this week as we enjoyed the Summer Solstice. Celebrated on June 21st, the day marks the true start of summer for me. It is our ‘longest’ day of the year in the Northeast, offering six more hours of daylight than its astronomical opposite on December 21st. It makes me think about time and how I choose to spend it. A concept, I might add, that I rarely thought of pre-transition.

Solstice derives from two Latin words; sol, or sun, and stare, to stand or stop. Early astronomical observers believed that on the solstice the sun stopped its progression in the sky. Its literal translation is the day when the sun stands still.

The solstice’s definition caught my attention this week because I’ve been noodling a presentation I gave earlier this month. On June 9th I hosted a luncheon ‘dry run’ of the key messages from my upcoming book, Women & Transition: Reinventing Work and Life (Macmillan Nov 2015). The outset of the conversation was standard fare: transition’s definition, its anatomy, and an overview of a process that I created to help women navigate transition.

What really caught my audience’s eye was a list at the end of my remarks about what surprised me most in my research. For those unfamiliar with my research, I spoke with two hundred women in various forums about transition over an eighteen month period.

Before I share the surprise, let me give you some background. It’s a bit of an oversimplification so please bear with me.

Thanks to my research and my own circuitous path, I found that transition requires us to navigate an iterative two-stage process. The first stage is ‘envision,’ during which we develop a hypothesis of what ‘might be’ possible for us. It goes by many names. A dream. A wish. A personal strategy. You can choose the vocabulary most comfortable for you. This stage asks us to think beyond our assumptions about what we could or should do – staring down boundaries set by ourselves and by other’s expectations of us.

The second stage is ‘validate,’ a stage during which we test and retest and learn about our ‘envision’ hypothesis. This stage is experimental and flexible – progressing in increments designed to fit our own circumstances. At the end of all this you get a refined wish and real life experiences to give you the confidence to move in that direction. I referred to the transition process’s cycle at the June 9th lunch as the dream/do loop.

The surprise I shared on June 9th? I’ve witnessed again and again that women shortchange the work in the dream stage, preferring instead to do. The work of thinking – wishing – is difficult, non-linear and uncertain. Let’s face it most of us would rather clean the refrigerator on a sunny day than undertake such a task.

Wishing seems fanciful. This is only partly true. Here’s what I’ve learned: Dreaming requires us to trust our instincts – and most importantly to dignify what we hear. There is a competency we build up in the process – we learn to quell the negative internal voices that instantly pop up to extinguish whatever those instincts may be telling us.

In the summer weeks ahead be aware of the shortening days as we begin the long cycle towards the Winter Solstice. If you find yourself with a moment or two, dream. I’ve found it’s the most useful do you can do.

Painful redirects

It is easier this late in my transition. Reframing that is. Earlier this week I had an interview for a professional opportunity. It wasn’t my finest hour. At the end of the day I am disappointed in myself. Transition is full of learnings – successes and failures. I thought today I might share a little about how I’ve learned to reconcile the less than stellar events along the way….

At this moment I am frustrated with myself for not doing better. The rich data and conclusions that I had to share barely came out. In the moments since I have comforted myself with a continuous stream of negative self-talk. Ever been there? How could I have blown it? In a spectacular fashion I might add…..

In my book I talk about techniques to help us reframe a situation. Re-framing contributes in two ways; it acknowledges that there will be hits and misses during transition, and it embraces perspective – an incredible gift. In transition we need to learn from the misses but not get stalled by them.

In my book I introduce a technique called externalizing. It helps you bring objectivity to an experience. It asks women to change adjectives to nouns. By adopting this approach I would say, “you are not the problem. The problem is the problem.” For example a friend of mine is very angry about her transition’s length. The anger is a mix of many emotions – including shame and a real fear that she’ll never be able to get the job she desires. She is very connected to how it might look – this extended job search.

For her this technique would ask her to change an adjective – like being angry – to a noun. Instead of saying, “I am so angry,” the woman would talk about “How long the anger had been influencing her.” The technique challenges my friend to redirect her energy away from negative self-talk and towards more positive activities. It puts separation between her and her emotions.

Nelson Mandela in his Long Walk to Freedom said, “do not judge me by my success. Judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again.”

I find that my stumble earlier in the week was a gift. It helped me recalibrate – at a critical time. It brought me back to reality. I had been a bit untethered.

Why?

A week or so ago my publisher asked me for a list of people who could possibly write a forward for my book. Not all books get forwards. The mere question sent me into the stratosphere. It was a sign – a good sign – she and her publishing house really believe in my project.

The gap between these two experiences was sobering. The gift is that it has helped me hunker down on finishing the book. It reminded me of the importance of bringing honesty to the experience of transition. An honesty that from my viewpoint know one has cared to do before. Yes there are painful days – even those days when the pain is self-inflicted.

Your transition will be characterized by wins and losses. I hope that you have the presence of mind to bring objectivity and grace to your worst moments. Within each is a gift – waiting for an appropriate frame.