How women evolve
I met Kerstin more than a decade ago through our blogs. She was living in the U.K. at the time, and somehow, we found our way to each other’s stories and connected over our shared love of home—home in the physical sense and the journey to find home within.
Later, she and her husband did what Kerstin describes as a radical rethink of their lives and moved to Bellingham, Washington where they still reside today. During that time of transition she wrote on her blog: without risk you cannot create the life you want.
As a former television journalist, I know what it’s like to step off a path that once felt so certain and into a new world of possibilities. It feels scary and right and also like, what the heck am I doing? There are no guarantees, just the voice within calling us onward.
The power of connection
Recently, I flew from Charleston to Bellingham to visit Kerstin. It was part creative retreat, coaching each other around the next steps in our work, and part fun vacation. Her husband flew us to a pancake breakfast on their private plane named Ginger, and we took a day trip to Canada where we took pictures and shopped for things like stationary and duty-free skin care products.
A highlight of the trip was meeting up with Kerstin’s friend, Valerie Day, for coffee on the waterfront. Kerstin and Valerie got to know each other when Valerie enrolled in one of Kerstin’s web design courses, and some time after that, Valerie and I connected on Instagram after Kerstin featured our stories in her community project, Asking for Impossible Things.
If you were alive in the 1980s or have ever listened to the radio, there’s a good chance you know Valerie too. Valerie and her husband are from the band Nu Shooz which is known for the hit song, I Can’t Wait. I not only remember the song, it lives inside of me somewhere playing in the background of my youth; it also feels like I just heard it on the radio yesterday, and I probably did.
After Kerstin and I met with Valerie, I kept thinking about the central theme that runs through all of our stories. When it comes to who we are as women, in our careers and in our lives, we have not peaked. We have evolved and will continue to evolve.
Redefining success
We’re living a different story than the one society has tried to tell us about success—that there is a window of time in which we must rise and reach our wildest dreams and goals, that we have to hurry up and do it all and be it all before time passes and we lose the opportunities of youth and become irrelevant, invisible.
We’re living a story that says we get to define the trajectory of lives. Today, Kerstin teaches people how to build calm, sustainable, and profitable businesses online and Valerie uses her talent to produce a podcast and teach singers how to infuse their work with purpose, heart and meaning and redefine what it means to “make it” (I love that).
So much of my own career evolution has been about discovering all the ways I can use my training as a professional communicator and storyteller to yes, make money, and to also serve others.
During our coffee, Valerie asked me in addition to mothering and writing, what do you like to do? as in, how do you like to spend your time? I pushed aside the tired story that my mind likes to tell, that there is no time for anything else! But that’s not true: I like to exercise, I like organizing and decorating my house, and I like to dance!
I’m grateful to the women who are debunking the myth about success: you pick one thing, you rise to the top (or you don’t) and then you’re done. Sure, certain careers have a shelf life. But there’s a new joy that comes when you learn that who you are and what you do can peacefully co-exist. There’s still a lot of work involved, because work is work, but there’s less fear and panic around it. It’s not just about the doing, not anymore. It’s about the living.
