personal transition – Women and Transition

Simple Gifts

I made an observation last night as I was sitting in our dining room with some old friends who stopped by. We talked and laughed. We learned about how the holidays were taking shape within each of our respective lives. It was lighthearted. But I knew that there was a lot missing from our conversation. One of our comrades had recently lost a parent, two others were in the throes of job searches, still another had recently chosen to undergo cosmetic surgery. One was exhaling – thankfully exhaling – since an adult child who had previously struggled with substance abuse was in a good place. Blessedly. Continue reading…

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…

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…

Distance versus Denial

Last week I was struck by a quick comment made by Joyce, a mid-forties marketing czar and parent. She’d lost her job just prior to year-end 2014. A mutual friend asked if I would have coffee with her. “I’m ready,” she said as we settled into our seats at roast, our local Starbucks alternative. She wanted to initiate a job search. There was something else I heard – her tone and demeanor didn’t quite match. “I put all that stuff behind me,” she said. As if saying, ‘isn’t that what I’m supposed to do?’ Continue reading…

Four and Foresight

“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.

A different lens

For those dying to know..my son’s team lost their play-in game 3-2 in the 11th inning last weekend (Resilience, 6/14/2014). A real nail biter. Despite the loss the season was a great experience for him. Positive. Challenging. Engaging. In fact, I’ve been noodling what a group of nine-year olds and their undying optimism might contribute to transition. Any guesses?

A great attitude perhaps? No fear of failing? Boundless energy? Another experience I had last week brought a different lens to it for me.

“It’s very hard to keep energy to maintain the right mindset,” shared a woman at a luncheon I was facilitating. She’d recently been fired from more than a decade of service in the technology industry. The event was still raw in her mind. She was sad. Angry. Exposed.

It wasn’t helping that colleagues were still calling to say, “I can’t believe you were let go….” In a more lucid moment she offered, “I refused to play the games. I know that’s why I lost my job.”

It wasn’t until later in the conversation that I began listening in a different way. The conversation had turned to the challenges of securing a new job as an experienced contributor – particularly in light of the online job search process. Each woman found herself responding to jobs that were a step back from her prior role’s scope.

Most were targeting specific companies. Many were networking to try to get a handle on upcoming opportunities. Most had had the experience of being ‘late’ to a job posting because it had been pre-wired for someone internally even prior to being visible to ‘outsiders.’

I offered an idea on how to network another way. I suggested that the ladies try a thought leader approach to finding the right ‘job.’ Puzzled looks all around…

This approach requires that you initiate a conversation about something for which you are the expert.

Create a draft of a new asset- a white paper or an outline for a talk to an industry association. Sound difficult? It isn’t. Think about an angle that you – and you alone – would have given your prior experience and your interests regarding where you hope to land.

What then? Outreach to a few people and ask if they’d be willing to provide feedback or offer a fresh perspective.

Why is this important? The evolving asset is really a showcase of the value add that you might contribute to an organization. It will lead in unforeseen directions and value add conversations….guaranteed.

Here’s is where I started listening differently…..

“I like it. It’s a peer conversation,” shared one woman who finally smiled. Immediately the room got lighter. Everyone breathed. This thought leader option seemed to offer an approach that rebalanced an uncomfortable situation for these ladies. Finally an approach that catapulted these women over, around or through transition’s real emotions like inadequacy, shame, guilt, and fear.

A dozen players tried their hearts out last weekend. They lost but really they won.

Imagine what might be possible should you be willing to re-balance transition’s gripping emotions. If you’re anything like my nine year old friends you can’t help but win….