I’ve kind of always been a pretty rigid, Type A kind of person. As a child, I didn’t like change; I didn’t want to be surprised by anything.
I was a perfectionist.
Becoming a parent sent me into overdrive. I was overprotective, germaphobic, and overwhelmed with postpartum anxiety and depression that never really went away. I wanted everything to work perfectly, and no matter what I did, I didn’t feel like I was doing a good enough job.
I never really felt that way in my chosen career as a speech-language pathologist, however. My interest in the field just fell into my lap, and I took the leap to apply to graduate school.
It was the first time in my life that I went into a new experience with the mentality of “Whatever happens, happens.”
When I graduated with my master’s degree in speech-language pathology, I thought I wanted to work with adults post-stroke. Still, I couldn’t find a job in that arena, at least not one that would be flexible enough to accommodate someone with a baby at home.
I ended up working in Birth to Three, or early intervention. This was so perfectly suited for my personality. Not only was I able to provide speech therapy services to babies and toddlers, but I also worked directly with parents to help them engage with their children.
As the years passed and I became more involved in this career, I felt like I was losing myself.
I was generally able to function well at work, but I was also masking all of the underlying anxiety and depression I had struggled with since I was in my early 20s. I was burning out, both as a mother (now of three children) and as a speech pathologist. I was missing deadlines at work and at my children’s school. My marriage wasn’t what I had envisioned for myself. Again, I felt like I wasn’t doing a good enough job.
I decided to pivot to working in a different environment altogether: first in an outpatient clinic, and then within the school system. I loved everything about my job again and was excited to go to work every day. Around the same time that I felt like I was finally in a good place in my career again, my marriage was completely falling apart. I hid this at work, but at home, my life was a complete mess. That started filtering back into my work environment, creating a vicious circle.
I felt like everything in my life was completely out of control, the thing I couldn’t stand when I was a child.
I realized that there were so many things in my life that were competing against each other, but the underlying factor was always my struggle with mental health.
Going to therapy, resuming my medication, and getting a divorce were so vital in helping me to claw myself out of what felt like a never-ending hole.
I also began embracing change, especially the unexpected. I had lived my life up until age 39 so strictly, mostly doing what I thought everyone around me expected me to do. But that never served me, my family, or my patients and clients very well.
Once I began living unapologetically as myself, my whole perspective changed.
I let myself be open to throwing out everything I had known to be effective in keeping myself safe (whatever that means). I started living my life on my own terms.
So when a new job opportunity came into my life last month, I embraced it to see where it could go, even though it was only a one-year contract. It meant leaving behind a company I put my heart and soul into for almost eight years. It meant opening myself up to the unknown. It meant giving up control of what I thought my career would look like. It was surprisingly freeing.
It was just like when I got divorced: shedding the expectation of what “should” be and opening myself up to the possibility of what “could” be, no matter that I didn’t know where it would lead.
What am I going to do in a year when this position ends? I have no idea, but for now I’m just enjoying the ride.
