This is what finally got me: Promotions feel like more responsibility in a system you’ve already outgrown. Like, why would I want to get more enmeshed in this? I'm already miserable. Great article.
I left a high pressure job 2 years ago and took a big risk starting up on my own. Now my work fits around the rest of my life rather than the other way around. I can pick and choose my clients as well as when and where I work. I may earn less, but I'm rich in other ways... I spend more quality time with my child, more quality time with my partner and have more time to craft, exercise and socialise. I would never go back to a 9-5 now!
Patri, “performing competence” names a reality many capable women carry for years before they have language for it. The piece is strongest where you show that outgrowing a career can happen quietly, through the slow realization that mastery, reliability, and external success have become disconnected from vitality. I appreciate the way you connect autonomy to energy, financial agency, and the right to stop being the operating system for everyone else’s stability. Grateful for the clarity here, especially around the moment when a woman begins asking what her expertise could build once it is no longer organized around endurance.
I was laid off in January after 15 years in software and web development, climbing a ladder to nowhere, feigning excitement for the evolution of technology that threatened all of us. I have been thanking god every day since January 30 at 2pm that I was set free, and now I am in the next chapter and it is ALL about reclamation! I LOVE this piece, thank you!
I was an RN for 25 years. Burned out and walked away. Now, I own two auto repair shops with my husband. Life isn’t perfect, but life is way better than before.
The phrase that stayed with me was that leaving was a choice of resilience, not status. I think many women spend years performing competence so well that nobody notices the cost, including us. The business works. The family works. The life works. But the woman holding it all together slowly disappears.Walking away from something that looks successful on paper is often viewed as failure by the outside world. Sometimes it is actually wisdom.
Thank you for putting language around an experience so many of us struggle to explain.
The phrase that stayed with me was that leaving was a choice of resilience, not status. I think many women spend years performing competence so well that nobody notices the cost, including us. The business works. The family works. The life works. But the woman holding it all together slowly disappears.Walking away from something that looks successful on paper is often viewed as failure by the outside world. Sometimes it is actually wisdom.
Thank you for putting language around an experience so many of us struggle to explain.
This is what finally got me: Promotions feel like more responsibility in a system you’ve already outgrown. Like, why would I want to get more enmeshed in this? I'm already miserable. Great article.
I left a high pressure job 2 years ago and took a big risk starting up on my own. Now my work fits around the rest of my life rather than the other way around. I can pick and choose my clients as well as when and where I work. I may earn less, but I'm rich in other ways... I spend more quality time with my child, more quality time with my partner and have more time to craft, exercise and socialise. I would never go back to a 9-5 now!
Patri, “performing competence” names a reality many capable women carry for years before they have language for it. The piece is strongest where you show that outgrowing a career can happen quietly, through the slow realization that mastery, reliability, and external success have become disconnected from vitality. I appreciate the way you connect autonomy to energy, financial agency, and the right to stop being the operating system for everyone else’s stability. Grateful for the clarity here, especially around the moment when a woman begins asking what her expertise could build once it is no longer organized around endurance.
I was laid off in January after 15 years in software and web development, climbing a ladder to nowhere, feigning excitement for the evolution of technology that threatened all of us. I have been thanking god every day since January 30 at 2pm that I was set free, and now I am in the next chapter and it is ALL about reclamation! I LOVE this piece, thank you!
I was an RN for 25 years. Burned out and walked away. Now, I own two auto repair shops with my husband. Life isn’t perfect, but life is way better than before.
The phrase that stayed with me was that leaving was a choice of resilience, not status. I think many women spend years performing competence so well that nobody notices the cost, including us. The business works. The family works. The life works. But the woman holding it all together slowly disappears.Walking away from something that looks successful on paper is often viewed as failure by the outside world. Sometimes it is actually wisdom.
Thank you for putting language around an experience so many of us struggle to explain.
The phrase that stayed with me was that leaving was a choice of resilience, not status. I think many women spend years performing competence so well that nobody notices the cost, including us. The business works. The family works. The life works. But the woman holding it all together slowly disappears.Walking away from something that looks successful on paper is often viewed as failure by the outside world. Sometimes it is actually wisdom.
Thank you for putting language around an experience so many of us struggle to explain.