Accidental Sabbatical

Raise your hand if you've ever wept while reading your LinkedIn feed.

Oh. Just me?

You see, I am emerging from an unintentional, uninvited, unwanted, unforgiving, unknown, and super uncomfortable (nailed that one!) pause – and I just read Abby Falik 's incredible insights in: The Power of the Pause: How to take a break, and make it count.

Abby Falik - I love that you got personal and it inspired me to try the same - maybe others have found themselves in pauses a bit more like mine. Pauses that happened to them rather than pauses they initiated. The good news is, however one's pause germinates, I think most of your advice still holds. I just had to back into some of it.

The reality for me is that a pause by any other genesis probably wouldn't have happened and may not have yielded the same learning and clarity about my passions. So, in spite of not exactly embracing my pause (on good days, “limbo”; on bad days, “purgatory”) it was undeniably powerful.?Also, admittedly, I am (still) trying to be gentle with myself.?Hence the tears when reading your article :).

Abby, when you and I last spoke, I was a bundle of questions wandering on a rainy day through the forested cemetery in Leadville, Colorado, trying to soak up some of your entrepreneurial wisdom and strategic thinking. You described the place I was at as a “juicy juncture.” Indeed.?

For those who don’t know, here’s a quick summary of how my pause came to be:?

May 2020 - Nora Robyn, our pandemic baby arrived. First onesies featured “cute” slogans like “6 feet please.” Nora read the room full of uncertainty and elected to smile and go with the flow (NB: this is no longer her vibe as a “spirited” 2 year old)?

August-December 2020:?

• I worked (in collaboration with incredible partners) from my role as the ‘Director of Nature Based Learning’ for our small (~1000 students) school district to ensure the outdoors would be part of the solution to keep kids in school. Even as I felt so deeply uncertain about all of the unknowns of COVID and its risks, I saw and felt the other risks and equity issues associated with remote schooling (which have been reported on extensively; if you’re interested, here’s one piece I liked back in late 2020).
• Meanwhile…I wrapped up my work with Get Outdoors Leadville! and Lake County School District

…because our family would be moving – to Kenya (!) in January 2021.

Eric Wanless had been “commuting” from Colorado to various African countries for almost 15 years. We thought, "let’s move our family to learn and grow and gain perspective and awareness about the world." It was a unique opportunity. [For reference: Clara was almost 3, Nora almost 1]

January 2021. We didn’t move. COVID, shifting sands at work…

Insert: UNINTENTIONAL, UNINVITED, UNWANTED, UNFORGIVING, UNKNOWN, & SUPER UNCOMFORTABLE PAUSE

August 2022 - Move to Kenya [Nora 2.5, Clara 4.5]

When I was first grappling with this pause and all of those “u” adjectives, my wise friend Thea Maria Carlson said something about my discomfort deriving from ‘having imbibed the capitalist productivity Kool-aid of the patriarchy.’?

Apologies, Thea, as you actually said something much more eloquent and thoughtful, I’m sure. I promise I was listening. I was just also hurting and lost and couldn’t quite make out what to do with this (fair, accurate, incisive) commentary. So I paraphrased it and stored it away for later.?

As I stared at this unknown pause, I did a mess of things (that looked a lot like NOT PAUSING) from leading a search for Get Outdoors Leadville!’s incredible Executive Director, Vanessa Saldivar , to training for (and completing) the Leadville Trail 100 Mountain Bike race as part of my effort to reclaim my body after 2 kids, weight gain, and shape-shifting. I invested in my own professional development by enrolling in the "Design Thinking" certificate with IDEO U (Shout out to Eva Hoffmann , Zach Arnold , Jessica M. , Felipe Rocha Melhado , Marina Nyagolova , and others in my cohort!).

The Foundations of Design Thinking course provided this prompt: “How might we design products/services for the modern 70-year old?” In engaging with this semi-abstract question (my mom Alice Katz did just turn 70!), I discovered folks in that age bracket are often facing a pause somewhat similar to mine (except maybe they can see it coming better!). Perhaps they are forced to move to a new home due to health issues, or retire from their life’s work, or make new friends (as they begin to lose some of theirs or move to a new community). They, too, are facing pauses that in many cases they might describe as “unintentional, uninvited, unwanted, unforgiving, unknown, and super uncomfortable.”

So in this design thinking course with what I thought was an academic exercise, I began having profound discomfort as the empathy was almost too much to bear. During week 3 of the “Insights for Innovation” course, we embarked on a “deep empathy” assignment. Gulp.

But I always do my homework, so I put my head down and reached out for help from alumni coach Jessica M. (thank you!). In our meeting (one where I was grateful for glasses and zoom screens providing a bit of cover for the tears welling in my eyes), Jess and I planned a psychological empathy experience. I would enter places where people had predominantly known me in my professional identity (i.e. the schools where I’d worked, public spaces like the coffee shop in town, the grocery store) and then, when people asked, “What are you up to these days?,” I was to answer, “I’m a stay at home mom.” Full stop. No more words. No context about our move. No training for a race. No looking for a job. No interpreting for the school district. Nothing.

The shame I felt was unbearable.?

During this exercise, I ran into a guy who I’d worked with on a small project. He asked. I answered.

Not sure whether it was my facial expression, my body language, my voice, or the fact that there was actually a comma at the end of my sentence, but he followed up, gently, concerned even, “How’s that going for you?”?

This probably has to do with imbibing the Kool-aid Thea mentioned. Turns out I had a bunch of judgment all wrapped up in the idea of being a stay-at-home-mom - judgment focused on me and what I had (and had not) planned for my life. I know being a mom is super important. It’s probably the most important contribution I’ll ever make to the world. I also genuinely love being a mom. And I know many moms (and some dads) who dream of a chance to focus on raising and spending time with their children and not have work distracting from this important purpose. And, though I sometimes wish I were, I am not that mom.?

Like all moms, I’m a better mom when I am a more whole version of me.

This includes a lot of different identities. In my case, one of those identities is a professional one.?

And in a way that was so uncomfortable, I realized how much of my identity was tied up in my work...And I had just unintentionally lost that identity.?

This is how my pause started. It was uninvited and unwanted. And also unnerving!?

It was also unforgiving.?And, I think this is perhaps its most redeeming quality. I couldn't escape it. Somehow, I think I may have backed in to Abby’s 4-step formula for making the most of my pause.

1. Define your questions: Because of my pause’s genesis, I didn’t do this out the gate. My questions found me first after I stopped filling my time with other work

First:

• Why am I afraid of this pause?
• Who am I beyond my work?

And then, even as I wasn’t done dealing with those questions,?

• What have I learned from my work at the intersection of social justice, nature access, and education in Public PK-12 Title 1 schools??
• What solutions can I take from that work to generate guiding practices and principles that could be useful to others?

2. Find your teachers: I find teachers all the time. I’m super social and an external processor - so really everyone with whom I interact ends up weighing in on my thoughts (shout out to all of my teachers out there!). And, some of those teachers were experiences like my professional development course that ended up being more of a therapy journey wrapped in a design thinking certificate. My little girls definitely teach me to slow down (have you ever walked anywhere with any plants or bugs with a toddler?). The search for teachers could have certainly been more deliberate; still I feel I've met and learned from many guides - both human and non-human.

3. Get Uncomfortable: Check.?

4. Reflect Rigorously:?

• About 8 months into my pause, I set a New Year’s Resolution to type a page (Arial font, size 11, 1.15 spacing) x 5 days / week. This was to be whatever came out. Plenty of days I just wrote 500 words about being tired (which made me even more tired). But the discipline of this practice was unrelenting – which was good, as I was forced to write which often meant I was forced to reflect.
• Biking - I competed in the Leadville Trail 100 Mountain Bike race - a 100-mile ride with 11,000+ feet of climbing and a starting altitude of 10,000’ feet. This meant lots of time on my bike for reflection in nature - where I do it best.?

So where does this all leave me?

My accidental sabbatical resulted in two incredible things.

First, I learned that I must honor and nurture my many identities, not just the "LinkedIn" version of me (I recognize the irony as I write an incredibly personal LinkedIn article :). I'm embracing my identity as a mom knowing my girls need me to be authentic, vulnerable, and whole. I'm a partner who has made a fully conscious decision to move across oceans to a continent I've barely visited. I am here and ready to navigate the ups and downs of massive change with Eric Wanless and our kiddos. I'm making forays into a mostly-hidden-until-now identity: writer. I am a friend and friend-maker. Community member and community builder. And network weaver. And activist. And nature lover.

In addition to all of those many identities (and others, I am sure), I have found (and co-founded - shoutout Erin Allaman !) professional identity that is a meaningful, embodied, wholehearted application of my expertise and passions: Good Natured Learning . We're on a mission to grow an equitable nature based learning movement in public PK-12 schools by building educator capacity and activating nearby nature for teaching and learning.? Check us out, follow us, and reach out if there are ways we should be connecting.

I am sure there will be more tears and turmoil ahead, and I think this is a pretty good outcome for an accident.