Two decades in the corporate world
For most of my adult life, I worked in the corporate world. I spent nearly two decades building a career in leadership, compliance, and risk management, eventually working my way into executive positions.
And here's the thing. I loved my career.
I enjoyed the challenges, the responsibility, the problem-solving, and the opportunities to make a difference. I was good at what I did, and for a long time, I couldn't imagine doing anything else.
Until I could.
Time to think
During the COVID pandemic, I found myself laid off, with something I hadn't experienced in years: time to think. And apparently, I had a lot to think about.
For the first time in a long time, I wasn't consumed by work or the responsibilities that came with it. I had space to consider what I wanted from my life.
Around the same time, I started noticing something interesting. My girlfriends were having conversations about feeling unfulfilled. Women online were questioning their careers, their relationships, and the expectations they'd spent their lives trying to meet.
Different women. Different circumstances. But remarkably similar feelings. And I realized I wasn't the only one.
Like so many of us, I had spent over a decade in therapy, working through experiences, understanding patterns, and learning about myself. That work had been valuable, but what I was experiencing now felt different.
I wasn't trying to understand something that had happened in my past. I was trying to understand why the life I'd worked so hard to create no longer felt like the life I wanted. And I didn't know what to do with that.
A different perspective
The questions I was asking felt deeper than anything I'd explored before. They were about meaning, purpose, and what I truly wanted from my life. I realized I needed a different kind of support, someone who could help me look forward instead of back. That's what led me to work with a spiritual coach.
Working with my coach opened new pathways for me and new ways of seeing my life. She encouraged me to look at it from angles I hadn't considered, and to use tools I was already familiar with, like tarot and oracle cards, in a different way.
A card would suggest something, and I'd ask myself whether it applied to my life. Sometimes it did. Sometimes it didn't. The cards are open to interpretation, and that was the point. They didn't give me answers. They gave me questions I hadn't thought to ask.
And I discovered that sometimes an unexpected question or a different perspective could help me recognize something I'd been struggling to put into words.
More importantly, I began to realize something.
