The Call for Kindness...

A post from a past colleague hit me today, and it hit me hard. While we've all lived through a protracted, a somewhat brimstone feeling, 2020 (is this year 3?), many of us have found that the community around us was both larger, and smaller, than we'd ever really known.

A post on kindness in the workplace struck a heart string and I had to stop and wonder why. Over the years I've worked in large enterprises, startups and now, my own small firm. Each environment has come with it's challenges, but in the large enterprise, I struggled. But not for the reasons you'd think.

Here's the deal. Most people who have worked with me, in large corporate roles, were completely unaware of my home life. Specifically, for many years I was struggling through advanced pulmonary disease. On top of that, my husband had severe, intractable epilepsy and we were often in a never-ending cycle of meds/seizures/hospitals/meds. Between the two of us, that translated to many, many hours where I was working in my home office wearing oxygen or working through bouts of pneumonia. It also meant there was only one driver in our household and three kids. I can't tell you how many times people made assumptions about my work ethic, my ambition, dependability etc. Looking from the outside in, I looked talented, but scattered. High potential, but not invested in my career or growth. I've heard all types of feedback that mirrored those words. High potential, great work, excellent...but if only she was serious about her career....

What they didn't see, was me working at midnight to catch up on work I missed while going through breathing treatments. What they didn't see was me working with pneumonia from hospital beds (or my own bed) to keep my job AND keep up the illusion of health. (You'd be surprised how hard it is to thrive through illness AND hiring managers that know you're 'sick'. Plenty of sympathy, no growth.) What they didn't see was the hours of studying cutting edge tech, specifically AI, ML, new Data Eng tech all to have a leg up on other Recruiters. And what they all failed to see was that my family could depend on me, no matter what. What they failed to see, was that they could too. I was dependable, but not promotion dependable. :-)

So I guess this is my diatribe and my words of caution; you never know what someone is struggling, thriving and succeeding through. Slow down and take a closer look before you rush to judgement...