What’s Next…Again…and Again
I have worked since I was 15 years old. My first job was at a Jewish deli at the mall, and this is where I get my excellent sandwich making skills. It was fun, and like most, this was my first taste of financial freedom. For many years, my mom was a single parent so when it came to "stuff," we (my brother and I) often did without certain "things." No shoes with a swoosh on the sides or alligator…
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There is Someone Living in my Attic
Whenever I want to give up, I think of the bold words of Ralph Waldo Emerson “God will not have his work made manifest by cowards” And I want to scream. I am not a coward, God. I am not a coward. I will keep going. Keep knocking on doors. Keep doing the work. Keep making a fool of myself. Falling. Hurting. And I won’t give up. Not even when my legs don’t want to move. Not even when my…
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How to Get Your First Paycheck After Loss
I tried to think where to start. He had died not even a couple months before. The girls were 4 and 6 years old. He was the one with the job, the income. The future career. Financial stability. All of it went with him. Before he died I went back to college. He would take care of the girls one night a week while I was going to my classes, so I could be ready to have a ‘good’ job after he died.…
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Goodbye Survivor, I Have Work to Do.
I first met her after my husband was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer. Her first words were... you should have been the one dying. It would have been easier. Then she went on to tell me that I would not be able to raise my kids without him, that he was the smart one. He was the strong one. He was the one with a job. He was the one who could do it all. It should have been me with the cancer.……
1 Comment4 Minutes
Working with Money after a Loss: A Gentle, Healing Practice
Dear one, I know how tender this moment is. Loss. Transition. We grieve, we stretch, we hang on for dear life. We fall apart, we begin again. We walk through familiar places, disoriented and discouraged, as familiar strategies fail us. It’s as if one ball gets thrown up in the air, and then a few more join it. Soon, we can end up feeling like those balls – ungrounded and spinning all around. Loss…
3 Comments10 Minutes
The 3 Steps I Took that Got Me Laid Off [Finally Released] From My Corporate Job
For three years, I worked to keep my well-paying job as a writer at a small PR firm in downtown Manhattan. And then, for the next three years, I worked to release it. I remember the desperation with which I pined for this job to come through. I remember taking the call for my phone interview in the paint store in the ground floor of the office building where I worked at the time. I remember…
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Life After a Job Loss
Many of you don’t know this about me, but when I was in The Waiting Room after my husband died I worked at a big company at a job I did not like but paid the bills. After all, I could not be a grief therapist while I was grieving so much myself. My job at this company was in HR and I had to let go of people quite regularly. I walked hundreds of people out of the building, each time it was as…
10 Comments8 Minutes
Often It’s the Deepest Pain Which Empowers You to Grow into Your Highest Self.
The Vortex, I call it. Everyone has one in their life (at least one)—a time when you are tested in seemingly insurmountable ways—and you find yourself spiraling uncontrollably downward. Maybe your Vortex was when you were thirteen and a parent suddenly died. Or twenty-four and you found out your sister had breast cancer, and you got fired—both in the same month. Or twenty-nine and discovering you…
4 Comments12 Minutes
How Being Selfish Set Me Free
How I quit my ill-fitting starter career It was the fall of my senior year in college that I made the decision that would define my professional life for the next ten years. I was not ready for a full-time job and being financially independent, therefore I decided to go to graduate school. At the time, I was being groomed to be a student affairs leader (i.e. college administration). On paper…
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Happiness = Money
When my husband died seven years ago I panicked. Even though there was a small life insurance to keep me going for a while, my mind could not rest. Every time I looked at my very young daughters I would worry about their future. The money would last us so long. So I went and got an entry-level job, making minimum pay in the Pharmaceutical industry. I was 34 years old at that time and I was being…
12 Comments7 Minutes