The 45 Project, part 4: Doing my work, for myself
When I was growing up, my parents always told me that they didn’t care what career I chose, as long as it made the world a better place (no pressure).
When I was 4, I wanted to be a dancer — until I got kicked out of dance class for not following the routine being taught. When I was 10, I wanted to be a neonatologist because I loved babies — until I found out that sometimes I would have to witness some of them die. When I was in high school, I wanted to be the first biracial Supreme Court Justice — though admittedly I was a little fuzzy on the path to get there.
In college, I took a career planning course where we did all kinds of exercises and assessments around what we might be when we grew up. The top result of one of my assessments was “nonprofit administrator.” I didn’t know what that was at the time, but I set about finding out and eventually pursuing it. The description fit the images in my mind about my future work life — in an office bustling about between meetings and calls, in a team, in charge, working to change things that mattered in the world. It was years before I recognized this as the work life that as a child I’d watched my mother live, as an assistant superintendent and eventual superintendent of a school system.
I started out working with kids, because I’d always done it and always loved it. I moved to New York for grad school in nonprofit management (that career planning class that I only took for the credits was the gift that kept on giving), and 9/11 happened a year later. I started working in disaster recovery, and when it was time for that organization to sunset I went to work for a partner nonprofit, where an executive director I had been on a workgroup with welcomed me onto her team just because she believed in me. When a directorship opened up over the employment and training programs, she told me to apply for it; she said she knew I could do it, and she was right. Three years later, I was riding the bus down 125th St. from one of my program sites to the DMV to get my license renewed, and I passed the newly-built Harlem Children’s Zone headquarters. I’d followed HCZ’s work for years, and had used the words “dream job” in reference to them more than once, and in general had been thinking a lot about how I could get back to working with and for kids. I went to their website to see what they’d been up to, and the job I would eventually take there had been posted that day.
I was there for 7 years, running the early childhood programs and then the K-12 after school and support programs. I worked and lived in the community; I claimed every child I saw as my own; I answered the phone in the middle of the night when the alarm went off at one of my program sites — I was never off. I ate and slept and breathed my work in an organizational culture that demanded that and more, and I gave it joyfully and with love, never counting the cost.
Midway through my time there I became a Casey Fellow, and through the structured and intensive coaching and probing, I came to face some difficult truths about my place in the organization, my boundary issues with the organization, my deeper dreams about what my work could mean, and what I really wanted for myself.
After I ignored several prompts from the universe that it was time to go, it hit me in the head with a brick so I would finally accept the message (why does it so often have to come to that?). It was time to go. Almost the same day I had this realization, a recruiter reached out about a position on the executive team at a nonprofit in Jacksonville, Florida — a place I’d never been — running a network of small trauma-informed schools for girls. I interviewed; I got it; I took it. I left HCZ and New York — two things I thought I’d never say.
In my new role, I went about doing the same things I’d always done — working hard, making work the center of my life, building relationships with my staff, supervising too many people, always being available, with an added overlay of traveling a lot among the 19 sites across the state. I’d started over, but not much had changed.
Two years in, I went through a devastating break-up that broke me open, and I came to see myself differently as I poured all my energy into my healing for a year. At the other end of that year, I didn’t fit in my life anymore. I was exhausted; I was burnt out; I’d hit a wall. I couldn’t continue doing the job I was doing — I couldn’t trust and didn’t respect most of the executive team I needed to work with to get things done. I didn’t have the energy to pack up and move again, to a new city for some promising new job, and start over in a new organization. Yet I couldn’t imagine what was next if I stayed still. I gave myself 3 months off — I called it my sabbatical (shout out to severance) — and let myself rest and reflect.
The first day I woke up without anything on my calendar, and without a title, was brutal. Did it matter if I got out of bed? If I wasn’t doing anything for anyone, wasn’t solving any problems — who was I, and what was my value? I started small: have a real breakfast. Walk on the beach. Read. Sleep. Stare out the window at the water and the trees and the sky. Eventually my days started to fill again, at a slower pace, with more depth and richness available now that I wasn’t always speeding by my own life, now that I was starting to know what rested felt like — a feeling it took me months to achieve and even longer to recognize. I used my energy and time to show up for my chosen people — and for myself — in a bigger way. I started to write again. I started to dream again. For the first time in my life, I asked myself not just what I was good at, not just what needed doing, but what I loved doing — what lit me up, what gave me life, what fueled me instead of draining me.
Brick by brick I built something new, based on the answers to those questions. Coaching other leaders. Writing. Teaching yoga as a healing practice. Holding space in a circle. Supporting people to have the fierce conversations that move work and their own growth forward. Supporting organizations to build cultures that are nourishing. Going deep.
My grandmother Honee, who was a teacher because it was one of the only jobs a college-educated Black woman in Memphis was allowed to do at the time, but who had wanted a different life for herself, never pressured me to do any particular job or to meet any traditional external markers of success. She always said that what was important was for me to make my own choice. Though she passed away while I was in this transition, I always imagine her smiling as I finally made my own choices, doing what felt right to me, instead of grinding on behalf of some CEO’s vision.
Now I am in charge of my own days. I do only work that moves me, with only people I love, like, and trust. I’m leaning into the things that are mine to do in the world, and saying no to the things that aren’t. The first couple of years were pretty terrifying for someone who was used to a salary and a supply closet, especially since I wasn’t one of those people who’d always dreamed of being an entrepreneur. Eventually, I saw that “the how shows up,” as my business coach used to tell me, and the fear settled down. Now I can’t imagine how I did anything else all those years.
As they say though, wherever you go, there you are. I’ve continued to struggle with working too much and working too hard, with pushing my mind, body, heart, and spirit further than is healthy so that I can move work, meet people’s expectations, and always, always strive toward the cherished — but somehow never sufficiently reached — idol of productivity. I’d always said that my work life was crazy because I had crazy jobs, and I did have crazy jobs, but even working for myself I still did it the same way for a long while — long hours, too many commitments, nothing left to give at the end of the day.
I used to make excuses with the workaholic’s refrain: as soon as this project is complete, this event is over, this trip is done…things will open up, my load will lighten, work will be more manageable. I can’t talk/rest/think right now but I’ll be able to as soon as I get on the other side of…whatever. I never saw that it was always something. As long as you’re on the hamster wheel, the other side never comes. You have to make that space right where you’re standing.
I’m finally learning how to do that. I’m finally honoring my body’s needs and limits. My sabbatical time planted seeds of spaciousness and rest in me that I’m finally practicing. I can prioritize my own well-being. I can bring my best self to my family, even at the end of the day. I use the old tools I learned in order to pursue scale and progress — data, metrics, structure, rewards, accountability — to build a work life that is good for me. What’s good for me is good for the people whose lives I touch. Does one woman’s freedom matter? I have to believe it does.
This is part of a monthly series, The 45 Project, reflecting on my first 45 years — find the other installments here.
