Forging the Path We Take
I'm making my peace with becoming an unemployable woman. It's liberating in a way. It just means I have to forge my own path.
Like many single and child free middle-aged women, my ride on the mainstream wagon ended when I graduated college. Since then, I've had to figure out where I fit in, what I want to do, and what will make me happy. I have come to understand there is no one truth and no one knows which way is best.
CURATED FROM AROUND THE WEB
- on I’m Unemployable.
The death of the corporate job by
on Still Wandering.I Quit! 24 Successful Women Share Why and How They Quit Their Jobs, and If They’d Do It Again on Ladies Get Paid.
My sisters and I joke about how we probably have "contrarian genes," inherited from our parents, and rooted by previous generations of revolutionaries, teachers, journalists, matriarchs and nomads. We seem to be determined to go left when everyone else goes right. To not accept the mainstream view until we've vetted it. To act with revolutionary spirit, and never be satisfied with the status quo.
I was 21 when one of my college professors saw this trait in me, and pointed out that my first response to the unknown was to resist it and reject it. She was right, and eventually I needed to get good at moving through the unknown. But I didn't see it that way. I saw myself as an inquisitive truth seeker. A justice and fairness warrior.
In my early corporate life, this was a liability. I was skilled at finding a way through a problem (because: conviction), but I was also not willing to just go along. I rarely accepted anything at face value, and you certainly could not tell me what to do and expect me to do it. I'm sure I was a dream to manage.
As the years went on, I got better at hiding my true self, but I could never truly eliminate the friction. I understood that I was fundamentally at odds with the corporations I worked for. And the older I got, the more exhausting it was to just play along. A lot of women have to pretend in order to survive, especially those of us who are neurodivergent.
Becoming Audra at Unemployable Women talks about the effects of this phenomenon in this video, saying: "...after you leave you don't even know who the heck you are because in these environments you're so conditioned to have no personality, and to be serious all the time, and to have no voice..."
Becoming Audra also talks about how she, as a neurodivergent woman became unemployable, "I refuse to conform... to turn my brain off...to do whatever I'm told to do just for the sake of profit..."
Sound familiar?
I'm making my peace with becoming an unemployable woman. It's liberating in a way. It just means I have to forge my own path. And, it's something I know how to do.
Like many single and child free middle-aged women, my ride on the mainstream wagon ended when I graduated college. Since then, I've had to figure out where I fit in, what I want to do, and what will make me happy. I have come to understand there is no one truth and no one knows which way is best. Let that sink in for a minute. No. One. Knows. Which. Way. Is. Best.
That is both a terrifying and freeing thought. At times I have faced it and other times I have hidden from it. There is a heavy responsibility in deciding for yourself and on your own to do something out of the norm, extra-ordinary. It takes gumption, courage, and hope.
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Leaving the Ladder: An ex-corporate girl’s guide from the rat race to fulfillment by Linda Bayada*:
So here's my mini pep talk for you: If you are becoming an unemployable woman, you're doing something right. It means you are not accepting anything less that what you need and deserve. There is life on the other side of corporate, and it's up to you to forge your own path. You already know how, and you'll meet others going the same way on that path.
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Reading this, I found myself nodding along - because you've put into words what so many of us carry, Lola. Being 'unemployable' isn't failure at all, is it? It's a refusal. A refusal to bend ourselves into shapes that were never meant for us. That takes integrity, not weakness. And perhaps thats the heart of it: unbecoming what the system demanded, and becoming, at last, who we were all along.
Can relate! Thanks for this.