Make Yourself a Priority…NOW!

I last wrote about leaving my career after 20 years. There’s been quite a bit of time between when I did that and have written about the decision. I left the company in the middle of November 2019 and then it was Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc. I spent the time since then really trying to focus on what matters most instead of tuning into the chaos of the world.

Now, of course, we are in the midst of a pandemic. I have to say if I hadn’t made the choices I did when I did, the current state of affairs would’ve sent me spinning. I probably wouldn’t have even had the courage to leave my job if I had waited. When you get this pit in your stomach about choices that you know you need to make, it either fuels you and you act or it keeps you up at night and causes a great deal of anxiety.

If we are being real, I have been an anxious mess since Mateo was born. I love him so dearly, but lost myself in the process of becoming a mom. I give major kudos to the women who have really big careers like I did and seem to flawlessly juggle it all. For me, it wasn’t that I couldn’t handle it or make it work. It was that pit in my stomach telling me, “this isn’t the kind of mom you want to be.” “You didn’t work this hard to get here and then not be present.” The thoughts persisted. I wanted to be with my son, to be present in our family, to live a joyful life. I personally found it next to impossible to have my career and do this. …and so I left.

I had felt a nudge for years that I was in the wrong industry. Did I meet amazing people along the way? ABSOLUTELY! However, my drive or my “why” was to help people. When you are dealing with huge corporations, even when there is a desire to change it often never evolves or is so very slow that it is very frustrating. I felt for the last few years I was spinning my wheels. I didn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel and had to make a move.

I told myself if I was going to do a blog, it was going to be raw and real. So I need to rewind a bit to give full you full context. I was in a career I loved for so many years with a great company. As anything goes in this world today, good things come to an end. Cultures change, people change, and sometimes it truly is a lack of change that can drive your need to make a move. When I left that company I loved so dearly it was because we were expecting and I knew I needed balance to be a good mom. I was traveling too much and knew that I couldn’t do what I needed to do at home AND be great in a role that wasn’t a remote position.

When I left, it was for a role that was 100% remote and I was so very excited. A week before I started that role, we miscarried. Talk about devastation. Tears come to my eyes now as I’m typing it. I never understood what a difficult thing this was for so many women and families. Our society doesn’t talk about it. So many women have to grieve alone. My world came crashing in on me. You dream of all these things your whole life, then they come, and it gets ripped from you. It was truly heartbreaking for our whole family.

Just like I was taught, you put your big girl panties on and you keep going…and so I did. I started my new gig and threw myself into it so I didn’t have to feel the pain. I have always been a go getter, so I would have given it my all no matter what. This was different though. It was an unhealthy obsession that made me be so out of body that I could not be present in my personal life.

I cannot begin to explain how alone I felt. Also, I made the mistake of telling people earlier than I should have in the pregnancy that we were expecting, so then I had to let them know we lost the baby. I was so embarrassed. We both were. We felt like there had to be something wrong with us. Maybe God didn’t want us to have family and why not…we are good people. It just really caused a whole unearthing of the life we had planned for ourselves. I honestly moved from feeling heartbroken to being angry.

Thankfully, a dear friend reached out to me and invited me to a Bible study. I had not been to one as an adult, although I have always been very spiritual. I met some of the most amazing women in that group that over time I built incredible bonds with. It was then my heart started to heal. When I found out I wasn’t the only one, that this was actually quite common, and that you can still have a healthy pregnancy after all, the healing began.

I also started to realize that I needed to surrender these feelings to a Higher Power. It wasn’t for ME to “fix” which is my go-to response. That response has left me exhausted and depleted in the past. Allowing myself to turn it over to God was the only thing that set me free. I’ll certainly talk more about all of this because these super dark times are what led to the most beautiful moments and bold decisions.

Back to my job. I stayed there for 2 years and even though towards the end it was incredibly frustrating, I loved the people I worked with, and the vision my boss had. Unfortunately, in the industry I was in, due to heavy competition, lack of evolution, and those only holding onto success of years past, things end up not working. We had the right vision, right people, but lacked the buy-in from the top. So there I was, our son was 7 months old, we had already decided to have my husband quit his career to stay home with him, and now I get laid off. It was incredibly scary.

We had made the decision a few months prior to sell everything and go full time RVing. I’ll get into all these details in future posts because there is so much to share about that journey! Thank God we did. I cannot imagine what it would be like having our mortgage, car payments, and all the things associated with life in suburbia when I was laid off. So we just agreed to take the time for us to get back to basics and for me to not jump back into the same industry.

The simpler life was going well, then I got a call about an incredible opportunity and got sucked back in. It certainly wasn’t their fault and I was deeply flatter about the role, but sometimes we need things to test us until we are certain it’s not the path we want for ourselves. I was too scared to be unemployed and take the time to allow the process to unfold. Constantly a “go getter” who “fixes” everything. I had so many other things in my mind that I wanted to explore. I felt it was irresponsible as a mom to take that time, especially with no one working in the home at that moment.

I chased the carrot and it was so exhausting. This job was a travel job. I thought to myself, “you’ve done this before, you can do it again.” However, traveling with a small child at home is so hard. For me, it created immense guilt which led to scary anxiety. Life felt completely out of control. Meanwhile, to the world everything I was doing was right on target. I had to pull the plug. It was so scary to leave, but we knew it was time. It just wasn’t working for our family. We found property in Tennessee we were so excited about, but that fell through.

We ventured back in the RV to be near family for the holidays after a 5 month journey across the U.S. to re-calibrate. I don’t want to leave you on a sad note. Things did get better as you see from the new property in Boone! I have so much more of the joy to share with you. I just felt context was critical. There is more to come about our wild journey across the good old USA, searching for properties, and all the fun of raising our extremely energetic boy! For now, the land is calling! We have to go check on the progress at the property! Pics and videos to follow!

Stay safe and healthy! Much love! <3