What I’m discovering is that I get to say what the conditions are.
I said something out loud to my coach recently that I had never said before. Not in those words. Not all at once.
I had let a toxic job create a governing thought: this is what work is now. And I don’t like it.
That’s it. That’s the whole thing I’d been carrying. It sounds simple when I write it down. It was anything but.
* * *
Here’s what happened. Pre-pandemic, I was doing well as an independent consultant for social impact organizations — my own clients, good billings, the freedom to work how and with whom I wanted. A larger agency absorbed the shop I’d been subcontracting with, and with only one week to decide whether or not to move, suddenly I found myself inside a structure that didn’t fit me.
Meetings placed on my calendar constantly. Monday 9am meetings. 300 emails a day. Hundreds of Teams messages. Over 1,000 emails when I took a week of PTO. A rotating door of support staff.
I had come over with relationships – 5 years, 10 years. Built on trust + history + meaningful work together. And I was being asked, regularly, to do things that were counter to all of that. I was caught in between — protecting clients I cared about from the institution that was now paying me. (And giving me health insurance, because America.) Asking myself, daily: Who am I going to serve today?
That’s a maddening place to live. And it did something to me. It made me sick.
It made me lose faith. In people. In organizations. In myself.
“Oh,” I thought. “This is what work is now. And I don’t want any part of it.”
* * *
I want to say something about how my brain works, because it’s part of this story.
I’ve spent the better part of the last few years understanding myself in a new way — reading about PTSD + neurodiversity in midlife women. About ADHD, autism, sensory processing, and the special kind of exhaustion that comes from decades of masking in environments that weren’t built for you. I identify with what I’ve been reading. Deeply.
And I think there was a pileup. A job that didn’t fit, parenting a toddler in a global pandemic, my father’s demented decline, and perimenopause fuckery (insomnia, searing joint pain, and brain fog) — everything just colliding. A beautiful disaster that left me picking through the wreckage. Figuring out what was salvageable.
My brain is direct. Radically direct. Many may say to a fault. I don’t understand indirect communication — the talking around the thing, the corporate performance of language that says nothing. I’ve been in meetings my whole career thinking: why aren’t we just saying the thing that’s happening?
I love an assignment with a deadline. I love nerdy, smart, creative people who are funny. I love a mission I believe in with my whole heart. I track patterns and am highly sensitive to changes in mood and behavior. I can read a room before anyone says a word. I am sensory-seeking — I need movement, texture, light, variation in my day. I cannot do six back-to-back meetings every day and call that work.
For a long time, I had all of this as a liability. As character flaws and defects that made me a bad fit. (And, many times, a bad human.)
What I’m starting to understand is that these qualities I have are not liabilities. They make up a profile. And I get to find — or build — environments that actually fit it.
* * *
What cracked this open for me was a fractional consulting engagement with a civil rights nonprofit whose mission I have loved forever, and whose team I fell in love with. Great people. The kind of working relationship where things flow, where the relational thread runs through everything, where I closed the workday energized instead of depleted. The celebration of diversity in all forms. A culture of thoughtfulness and care. Don’t mistake me — there are miscommunications and mistakes, breakdowns and blockers. I’m not talking about perfection. This is an important distinction.
I hadn’t felt that way about work in years — or maybe ever. I’d forgotten what that felt like.
Around the same time, I applied for two full-time roles that slid into my inbox — not because I needed to, but because I was curious. The applications were affirming in a way I didn’t expect. The process of preparing for interviews reminded me about the scope of what I’ve actually done – what I can lay claim to. To the teams, organizations, and communities I’ve created. My instincts about people and relationships. The through line of 30 years.
“I can crush these jobs,” I kept thinking. That’s what I know to be true.
And then, in the session with my coach, H.L. Ray, the bigger thing arrived. I’d been working from a false binary:
Wellbeing or money. Freedom or income.
I have been working for myself because that was the only way to have any safeguards. Never imagining both could coexist working for someone else.
H.L. named something I’d been circling without landing on: abundance isn’t only financial. Flexibility is abundance. Fulfillment is abundance. A team you actually like is abundance. And I had been collapsing all of it into one question — can I afford this? — when there were other questions I hadn’t let myself ask.
“What would it look like,” he asked, “to be on the higher vibrating end of that abundance scale — and have the conditions in place too?”
I said: “It would be miraculous. Because I didn’t think they could coexist.”
* * *
So I’ve been doing the homework H.L. assigned me. Actually naming them. Not as a wish list. As non-negotiables.
Here’s what I’ve got so far:
— No calls before 10am. My brain needs a runway after school drop-off.
— Breaks between meetings — real ones. Not five minutes to refill my tea and shove a cube of cheese in my face.
— Rotating meeting facilitation. Power shared, not performed.
— Quarterly compensation conversations instead of annual reviews. I want to know where I stand in real time, not once a year in a room that’s designed to make me feel grateful.
— A leadership team that has done the work on their own identities — working with their own coaches to dig deep about who they are, what they carry, and what not to bring into the office.
— Colleagues with varied interests — people who are curious about more than the job. Who read things, make things, care about things outside the org chart.
— Direct communication as the norm, not the exception. Say the thing. I will say the thing back. This is not a problem.
— A mission I believe in. The impact I’m in service to has to matter more than the structure I’m in service to.
— Room to be sensory-friendly. Light. Movement. Variation. I am not a person who thrives under fluorescent lights in a windowless conference room from 9 to 5. I offer that most humans aren’t.
This is not a complete list. I’m still building it. But writing it down does something. It makes it real. A commitment, not a fantasy.
* * *
I see this pattern everywhere in my coaching work.
A woman in her late 30s — a visionary founder who has spent years building things for other people’s missions — sitting across from me trying to articulate what it would mean to lead from what’s important to her: creativity + excellence + whimsy! Not performing competence. Actually being seen. Discovering that her most powerful self-expression is also her most effective leadership.
A man in his mid-40s — queer, creative, a community-builder by nature — designing his life and business inside of light + love + connection. Learning to name what he’s truly in service to. Building a business where people can gather, create, belong — and level up their own brands. Figuring out that his relational genius isn’t incidental to his work. It IS his work.
A midlife educator who spent more than 20 years in rigid institutions that squashed her ideas + her spirit every time she led with them. Now painting. Growing a food forest. Developing a healing framework she’s calling “social permaculture” — the conditions (again, there’s that concept!) under which communities can actually thrive. Asking, for the first time: “What nourishes me? What do I need to grow?” We share about how we are both creating new operating systems for our lives.
A Lebanese immigrant in his 30s — a poet, architect, and a profound humanist and thinker building toward something stable — a place where he can host people, create community, call something home. Working out, quietly and with great intention, what home even means after years of impermanence.
Every single one of them is in the middle of the same discovery: the world of work, as it was handed to them, was not designed with them in mind. (H/T: racialized capitalism.) And they are done adapting to it. They are redesigning their relationship to it entirely. Some of them are blowing it the f*ck up!
* * *
Here is what I know now that I didn’t know before — or knew, but had lost:
I have never defined myself by what I do. I define myself by how I work + what I’m in service to. The mission matters more than the title. The relationships matter more than the institution. The impact is what I’m after.
But I had been making choices based only on impact — and ignoring the daily conditions. Ignoring what my particular brain needs to do its best work. Ignoring the question: “What about me?”
I’m a queer woman. A solo mom. A person whose brain runs hot + direct + relational. I’ve spent 30 years in movement work, philanthropy, community organizing — building things I believed in, with people I loved, for causes that mattered. I’m not done with any of that. I’m just done with the idea that I have to suffer the conditions to do it.
The conditions are the job too. And I get to say what they are.
* * *
The morning after that coaching session, my daughter asked me what her name meant.
I thought it meant “ruler” or “leader.” I looked it up.
It means “free person.”
She smiled and said: “I’m free, mama!” And I started crying on the walk to the camp bus.
That’s all I want for her. That’s all I want for any of us. The freedom to work in a way that’s actually ours. To be in service to something real. To stop performing a version of ourselves that doesn’t fit.
It turns out that’s possible. I’m just starting to believe it.
* * *
If you’re a midlife woman, like me, who has been living inside a false binary — freedom or money, wellbeing or impact, yourself or your career — I want to hear from you.
What’s the governing thought you’ve never said out loud? And what are your conditions?
Drop it in the comments, DM me, or leave a voice message via SpeakPipe. Stay close. I want to keep the conversations going.
