Behind the Curtain

I suffered in silence long before I suffered out loud, and wow… did I suffer loudly and obviously by the end of that chapter.  Everything I saw that might be able to help me was either some version of “Transform your life!  Quit your job and chase your dreams!” or “How to manage your time or improve your performance!”  Nothing I saw offered me peace in the place I was in at the moment.  Nothing filled the gap between "Keep going. It'll get better." and "Burn it all down and start over."  That’s the space I’m focused on now with my coaching. When you don’t want to keep experiencing another day like the last, but you aren’t ready to make a change, you can change the way you experience work and feel more like yourself again.  

Early in my career, looking at high-performing women in meetings and offices around me, I marveled at their drive, poise, and “executive presence.”  How do they do it?  Will I ever have the inner calm, purpose, and general badassery of these women?  As Ella Langley sings, I just wanted to “be her”, but the C-Suite version.

Then I climbed higher and saw behind the curtain. In my HR leadership roles, I was privileged to sit with women in their real feelings - their hopes, doubts, fears, and anger.  To hold space for them during their hard moments and bare witness to their journeys.

Coming up in my career, we didn’t “bring our authentic selves to work”; we “left our personal lives at the door”.  We didn’t have safe spaces and flex days, we “sucked it up buttercup”.  We definitely didn’t cry in baseball….maybe in a bathroom stall or our cars at lunch, but only if we could hide the evidence well enough to say “it’s just allergies” before returning to our desk.  I was driven, hungry, and fairly single-minded.  I was a bit of a nightmare, to be honest.  And I truly thought that what I saw on the outside represented the truth of who these women were and that I was the rare one struggling on the inside.  

As the workplace evolved and I rose higher and faster through leadership levels, I learned that the women who seemed to have it all were often carrying more than anyone knew. It was much darker behind the curtain than I ever imagined.  I became the safe space for women in my organizations who would walk out of my office and successfully pull off a high pressure meeting that made me leave sweat marks on my chair when it was over.  I watched them cry on their first days back to work after maternity leave, when they didn’t get the promotion, when they GOT the promotion, and through every injustice they experienced in the workplace.  Through surgeries, caregiving, death, and divorces…I’ve had the unique privilege of listening to and supporting women during my workdays somewhere between payroll issues and C-Suite temper tantrums; this was the invisible work I did that mattered most. 

Then I pivoted into tech consulting. A true career 180. I went from HR leader to individual contributor. From being one of the most senior people in the room to feeling like I didn't even know the name of the pond I had just been dropped into.

It was my first time in years experiencing work primarily as an employee instead of an HR leader. I was no longer sitting behind closed doors hearing what was really going on. I wasn't the safe space people were sent to. I was navigating the same deadlines, expectations, politics, restructures, difficult leaders, and imposter syndrome everyone else was.

Consulting also gave me something HR never could: a front-row seat to company after company, team after team, and culture after culture. I worked alongside more highly paid, highly accomplished women than ever before. Women so polished and put together that my imposter syndrome reached heights I previously thought impossible.  

I was no longer the HR person.  I was just another employee.

And yet the women still found me. 

And they shared.

“Oh, I cried every day the first 6 months I worked here.”
“I cry at least once a week.”
“Is it really consulting if you don’t cry weekly?”

These were the truths being shared with me regularly now. Even these women, who seemed to have it all, who didn’t struggle for survival, regularly had to release via tears to make it through their days or weeks.  Woman after woman confided in me, most in a self-deprecating and joking way, others just as a matter of fact.  “This is just how it is.” 

Progress, I thought at first. This is progress!  We can talk openly about it, we can now express ourselves freely at work, and my tears are okay.  I’M IN THE CLUB.  I’m validated.  I don’t need to be ashamed of the way I feel and I’m not alone.  And my suffering out loud increased in volume.  That volume attracted others to share their real daily inner experience with me.

Nothing filled the gap between "Keep going. It'll get better." and "Burn it all down and start over."

Over the last 5 years, I’ve watched the stress at work catapult to levels I don’t remember experiencing in my lifetime.  I’ve seen these amazing, badass women feel they have worn out and lost their spark.  They question what is wrong with them, what is wrong with work, and sometimes what is wrong with the world.  They wonder if this is all there is.  They wonder if it was worth it.  They don't feel they can leave. After all, they poured years, sometimes decades, into building the life they have now.  They have kids that need their income, mortgages that need to be paid, business partners they’ve signed contracts with who won’t take a departure lightly and teams at work that depend on them.  But the internal fire is dim, the questions are loud, and the path forward is murky.

Some have even stopped crying.  They’ve accepted this is the way it is and focus on detaching, “caring less”, and figuring out how to put their time in until the magic day they can retire or do a vague “something else” that they don’t have time or energy to think about.  Others are still hoping the next company will be less “toxic”, executive leadership will suddenly put humans ahead of boards and billables in real life and not just Townhall presentations, or the next boss will make it all bearable.  What struck me wasn't the stress anymore. It was how many women no longer sounded like themselves. 

Yes, it’s true that women have been experiencing this internal stress my entire career and it took me time to see it.  But it is also true that almost every woman I’ve met in the past few years is sharing some version of “I’ve lost my mojo”, “I’m just putting in time”, “I can’t do anything else at this point so I just put one foot in front of the other”.  In my lived experience, it's a downright epidemic.

So I’ve created what I needed all of those years ago. Yes, my coaching offers and tools are based on my knowledge and experience of everything from psychology through coaching through being an HR leader, but they are heavily inspired by and driven by my lived experience.  My services are what I needed when I was suffering silently, before I started suffering out loud, and definitely before I became someone I didn’t recognize, and frankly didn’t like, anymore.  

You are not alone.  I promise you are not alone.  And you don’t have to wait until burnout to change how you experience work.  The next company, the next boss, the next tech disruption, the next restructure….you can feel better through it all.  

I can't promise you'll never cry at work again.  

I can't promise the next restructure won't happen. 

I can't promise your boss will suddenly become enlightened. 

But I can promise this:

You have more power than you think.

You can do more than survive.

And you can feel more like yourself again.