I have been deeply stressed about work since I was 12. I knew I needed to have a better quality of life than the one I was experiencing and the right work would provide the financial means to help support a better life. I didn’t know it at the time but this was a flight response and work became a means of escape from the stressful reality I was experiencing. However, my age really limited my work options. My parents received complaints from me about how unfair I thought it was that I wasn’t legally allowed to work at 12 years old. I could work and I wanted to work…I didn’t understand what was wrong with that. But my stress response was strong, so I found a way to attempt to work. I tried to start a babysitting business. I completed a professional babysitting training at my local library and then created flyers for services - I wrote my age as “12 and ¾” because I thought that being almost 13 would make me more desirable than just 12. I distributed these flyers to neighbors. My efforts yielded no results. 

Further efforts did yield results. As soon as I could legally work at 15, I’ve almost always been working. When I graduated from high school, I attended college. This decision was made only from the pressure I placed only myself because I had believed that a college degree would lead to the material security I wanted. I pursued a couple of secure routes of studies in healthcare, but soon came to realize those were not for me. The need to get a degree that would provide material security no longer seemed important after those experiences, so I instead finished with a Bachelor's degree in Environmental Studies. It was mostly effortless to learn about subject matter that I loved and that informed me about issues that society was neglecting to adequately manage. After graduating, I joined AmeriCorps and educated youth in communities with limited resources about health and the environment. This is where I first met a love for teaching, mentoring, and caregiving. At the end of the terms of service, I felt compelled to do more to improve the quality of education in schools serving low-income students and decided to pursue a Master’s degree in Education. I was aware that teaching would require a lot of sacrifice and overworking, but I wanted to make those sacrifices and I valued myself for that. That’s the only way I knew, at the time. 

When I first started teaching middle schoolers, I loved it. I was excited to wake up early and get ready for my day, which often led to having extra time to wait before the school opened. There were many challenges to teaching, but I enjoyed finding and enacting solutions to the challenges. I didn’t want anything to change. However, students started confiding in me matters that I could not solve on my own - child abuse, sexual harassment, and more. I deeply cared to report these matters and was also legally obligated to report them, but experienced retaliation after making the reports. I sought support from my unions at the two different districts in which I served, but instead of receiving protection, this exacerbated the retaliation. This took a tremendous toll on my well-being, and my source of escape from stress became a new source of stress. Although this did lead me to learn about how to commit to finding ways to cope with stress and to improve my psychological well-being, it didn’t make up for what I was experiencing at work. When I quit teaching, I attempted to pursue other routes of employment, but I was too defeated to invest in anything but my personal life. I decided to fulfill a dream and sold the majority of my belongings, house included, and travelled across the country in my car for several months.

An unexpected turn of traumatic events led me to come back to my home state and live with my mother. The same patterns of escaping from stress returned, so I put all my effort into getting a job. This job did give me the means to accrue the finances and reputation to leave my mother’s home, but it was in another unhealthy work environment. When I quit this position, I took some time off to recover from burnout. After recovering, I did attempt some self-employment pursuits, but wanted to escape this uncertainty and found myself in another unhealthy work environment. Both of the work environments involved student neglect, low standards, a disregard for my suggestions for improvement, tasks of falsifying grant reports, and poor treatment from supervisors. My desire for well-being and self-respect finally superseded my desire for material security and I quit each job without having another job secured. 

After working in four misaligned work environments, I found the courage to commit to full-time self-employment. I had a couple of side hustles that I put full-time effort into, which included selling digital educational resources and pet care. Supporting myself through these means provided the space to take care of myself and work not as an escape from stress, but as a means to support myself. It also gave me the space to use my personal time to grow as an individual, whereas in the past my personal time was mostly focused on coping. 

Amongst the traditional full-time positions I have held, I’ve also sold my hobbies. This has included selling handmade soaps at craft fairs, reading astrology charts, and teaching yoga. I found that turning my hobbies into work was stressful. What once nourished me on my own time became forced and burdensome. There have been many more ideas, but they were just ideas. None of them ever felt fitting to me. 

What I have found that has felt fitting to me is this. I am able to use my strengths in a way that empowers others through hard-earned wisdom. I am able to be free to live in integrity and not compromise my core values. My coaching services have been rooted in my own truth and free will, not a survival pattern. I hope to support others in moving towards this too.