I recently reconnected with my friend, “Colleen,” and was so inspired with how she initiated a major life transition that I asked if I could share her story here.
Colleen spent most of her life building a family and running a business with her husband. Then, about eight years ago, they divorced and ended their business together. After employing sizable teams for years, she had to get a job at a small start-up that shut down shortly thereafter. She went to another company that also had massive layoffs, then another one. After each layoff, it became harder and harder to get the next job. For another 18 months, she tried to find employment with no success. As a woman in her early sixties, she suspected she was dealing with ageism in an expensive city dominated by young professionals.
Colleen was withering. She was living on her dwindling savings. She began questioning her self-worth. Her kids were grown and didn’t seem to need her anymore, either. The continual rejection exhausted her.
Earlier this spring, she realized she needed to change her environment, even though it meant leaving behind everything that she knew. So, Colleen rented out her little house, packed her car with a few belongings and moved to a small tourist town in another state where there were more people her age. If it didn’t work out there, she reasoned at least it was a change from stagnating where she was. It was the first time in her life she prioritized her own needs.
Within a week in the new town, she found a part-time retail job and a one-bedroom apartment.
Within two months, she secured a good job that made use of leadership experience.
When Colleen recounted her story, what surprised me was her lack of bitterness. “(Seattle) was good to me for a long time. I still love it,” she said. “But it’s not the place for me any more. I had to admit that and move on.”
I am a big fan of finding the “lessons learned” from bad experiences. But, I realized that focusing on the bad may reduce these experiences to being useful only for what they teach us not to do. Colleen reminded me to acknowledge how many of those same experiences were also once sources of joy.
Honoring the good times doesn’t mean downplaying the bad times. We can accept that our experiences are made up of both “bitter” and “sweet” parts, hence the word “bittersweet.”
The way Colleen uprooted her life and started over in a new environment reminded me of a friend’s once healthy plant that got crowded out by other plants and became sick. Sometimes we also get crowded out and have to transplant ourselves to a place that gives us more space to grow. Many of us will find that we have to re-root ourselves in new environments, workplaces, relationships to continue to thrive.
When have you had to “re-plant” yourself so that you could thrive again? Have you acknowledged both the bitter and sweet of the former experiences?
I’d love to hear what these reflections brought up for you.
Best,
