The Art of the Sabbatical

What is a sabbatical? Aren’t sabbaticals those things that only professors get? Why call it a sabbatical instead of just time off or taking a leave? In some ways you’re right; sabbaticals are fairly rare, so you can make it what you want it to be. I saw a statistic that only 6% of people take them. There are around 4-5% of employers with paid sabbatical leave policies (1) ?and 11-16% of employers have unpaid sabbatical leave policies. Previously, I was at a company who had a sabbatical policy after a certain level of tenure and seniority, which I found a clever way to retain star employees. The difference from regular time-off for me is in the intentionality with which the time is spent. People take sabbaticals for personal development, extended travel, to learn a new skill, spend time with family, and whatever you want; it’s an intentional shift in how you spend your time.

After a 25+ year career, in the last three years, I have found myself taking two! Mine were both in between permanent positions and mainly led by personal reasons. It felt different from a medical leave, family leave, maternity leave, vacation, off-ramping for child care, etc. In my case, my sabbaticals were 3 months and 13 months. I have been working since I was 11, full-time since I was 18. I put myself through college working 40 hours a week as a medical assistant and nanny. Besides regular PTO, the only time off I’ve had over the last decades has been maternity leave, a 3-month period before my first job after grad school, and I think that’s it? And let’s not talk about my 4-week maternity leave the first time as that’s a whole different article. I was never someone who took any real time between jobs for various reasons: they wanted you to start right away, the project was starting, there was a key meeting you shouldn’t miss. I have started jobs unofficially before their start date several times. As a Gen X up and coming young woman, often the only woman in the room, I leaned in; I was deathly afraid of off-ramping after my maternity leave; I read all the scary articles, and I fought to stay in the arena. So, what happened??

The first time was kind of an accident. I was in a job that I absolutely loved. It was Summer 2020. Since I was in healthcare, my work was even busier during the pandemic, we were trying to estimate deaths, rewrite IT protocols by state, rewrite processes, and my company was in the middle of being acquired. I started every morning with a 7 am call with national infection and death counts. I loved my boss; I loved my job, but I was burnt out. My sister moved in and took on the role of educating my two elementary aged children for the last 4 months of the school year. She did an amazing job. She taught my son to read. He started kindergarten hybrid. We were also isolating because she had CLL (Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia). While she had many good days, this was asking too much of her. When Fall came, I really felt compelled to take some significant time off to dig in to my children’s education, see what gaps they had, see what emotional needs I had missed, let my sister rest, and decompress from the pandemic.

In October 2020, I started my first sabbatical, I joined the 2 million women who left the workforce that year. At first, I fully focused on my family; I helped my kids and I rested. I had a slightly different situation though because I knew our schools were trying to go back in person relatively soon. I knew I could structure this into a sabbatical for myself as soon as the kids were back in school. I tried to figure out how to intentionally use my time. I remembered how I used to color code my time in grad school so that I would “balance” how I was apportioning my time. Nerdiness aside, I sat with myself and meditated on my values. Why was I burnt out? What parts of me were underfed? What parts did I not pay attention to? Where was I spending time away from my true values? I lined up to 5-7 core values. I bundled them into 5 days a week. Each day had a value. I rotated my activities through that schedule for 2-3 months. Slowly, I was fed spiritually and felt closer and closer to my authentic self. I felt stronger, more sure, more solid in my skin, more present for my family. I had energy to give. I wasn’t pouring from an empty cup; I was curating my own cup. That felt amazing and intentional. As a mother and executive where you’re always giving, the values exercise was key to realizing just what I wanted and needed. Two values I had been missing activity with were beauty and creativity (however that shows up). The key for me now was to break these down not into whole days but into smaller daily or weekly practices and then also include my family from there. This was an amazing first step.

In 2022, after returning to the workforce, our family found ourselves with new health challenges again. At one point, we had six family members or close friends with cancer and two in the ICU. As a natural caretaker, it was incredibly stressful for me to not be able to give everyone what I thought they needed from me or what I wanted to give them. With geographical distance and the sheer need, my own expectations were impossible to meet. However, it was one of those moments where life looks you in the face and asks once again if this is where you want to be spending your time. I was no longer enjoying my current position, missed my old position and most times wished I hadn’t left – but that was also make believe. Healthcare was just de facto in an incredibly difficult place. I was trying to figure out how to move forward happily. Where was my curated cup? It hadn’t stuck under ruthless pressure. I decided to dig deeper. Someone asked me: where can you go to just shine? Meaning, where do you just feel loved and accepted and yourself? For me, it was with old girlfriend relationships who had moved all over the country that I hadn’t kept up with properly. So, after a few amazing mommy and me trips with my children, I struck out to brunch, dine, spa, and chat my way back to authenticity with the women who knew me best. My husband is a god send and always dives in to support my journey(s) through life as I do his. In this case, as I dusted off my sailing captain’s license and flew across the country to mind-body retreats for the latest science, he kept the home fires burning. And now I ended up with an inventory of science-backed categories that fuel my vitality. This was a huge jump from being a mom who struggled to make time to see girlfriends on weekends before. Now, I keep my vitality inventory visually prominent in my home. I query my family on how their cups are doing and we’re journeying together. So, mom wasn’t just galivanting, she was out scouting for the whole family. Here’s our current inventory: nutrition – eat the rainbow; movement and exercise; time in nature; spirituality or purpose; nurturing relationships; service and making a contribution; art, music or creativity; meditation and contemplation; and therapy or treatment as needed. ?I give a lot of credit to Elissa Epel at UCSF for curating most of this research (2). It’s been working phenomenally for us and there’s definitely a couple I’m stronger in and a couple I have to keep an eye on. The framework has been helpful for me to check my levels though – am I low on nature? Let’s get out there. Am I low on female friendships? Time to nurture them. It also gives our family a language to talk abut these things like they’re normal batteries that we all might need.

Eventually, I needed to come back to work. This time, I was very conscientious about landing in a place with generous-hearted people and where I can flex creative muscles because that fuels me! I will also say that I was heartened to see on the application a drop-down box to explain my resume gaps with: were you traveling? Spending time with family? That also gave me a sense that times might be changing. After all, we’ve never been just workers and colleagues. We’ve always been humans who happen to work together.

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1.?????????????????? ?Companies with a sabbatical policy https://fortune.com/2015/03/16/paid-sabbaticals/

2.?????????????????? ?Find Elissa’s research and publications here: https://www.elissaepel.com/