When Ann and I started working together, she was busy, overwhelmed, and struggling with career questions. Ann was a professor at a local community college and loved working one on one with her students. However, she had difficulty maintaining a work-life balance and was often sucked in to working all of the time. As a nontenured, adjunct professor she didn’t have a guaranteed courseload and this uncertainty was difficult for her to accept.
Ann also wanted to lose the weight she’d gained over the last few years, as it was affecting her joy and overall happiness. Overall, she wanted to feel more in charge of her life rather than buffeted by external forces. I challenged her to put herself in the center of her life by first developing a wellness program that she could manage on a day-to-day basis — 15-30 minutes of exercise a day, meditation 3x a week, and clearing out old clutter in her home. She started to get traction in her self-care and hired a housekeeper.
During this phase of our work together, Ann’s mom died. This was a shock to her system and brought up a lot of grief and anxiety — as you’d expect. I supported her in working through her grief and releasing the anger, resentment, or guilt that she felt. Ultimately, Ann was able to put her mom’s disempowerment story — which Ann had started living as a child— to rest with her mother and claim her ability to live her own story going forward.
This was a transformational time for Ann, and working through it made everything else fall into place for her. Soon after, she got connected with a different division at the community college and was hired full time to run a program in her area of expertise.
I’m now in charge of the video capture of interviews of women who are successful in IT careers. We hope to use the footage to encourage and empower other women to follow them into education in IT. It’s exciting and nerve racking to be doing something brand new to all of us. So inspiring!
I spent Friday with one of the team members “scouting” locations and getting some video and stills that we will use in the project. It is a very good team that is forming and I am thrilled to be part of it! Thank you so much for your support!
As we ended our work together, Ann was proudly maintaining a consistent self-care routine and loving her work!