• 9 to 5 Dilemma: I Need Out of Corporate - Help.

• ❤️ Letter to the Perimenopausal.

• What’s the Point of Work Anymore? (Not as Depressing as it Sounds!)

• 1 Quick Tweak to Make This Week.

First, let me say this: nothing about what you’re feeling is dramatic or unusual. It’s what happens when someone who’s spent years being capable, reliable, and adaptable finally hits the edge of what’s sustainable. You’re not broken. You’re tired and tired people start imagining escape routes.

Second, you’re in good company. Almost everyone I talk to has a version of the “quit my job and open something small and peaceful” fantasy tucked in their back pocket these days.

Mine is opening a wildflower farm in upstate New York, where I spend half the year selling my wildflowers at cute little farmstands and farmer’s markets and the second half of the year in hibernation making cozy soups and stews.

I say that to say, what you’re feeling makes sense. When someone has spent years carrying a heavy load at work and doing it well, there comes a point where the weight stops feeling manageable and starts feeling personal. That can shake your confidence, your energy, and the way you see your own life.

When I slow this down, a few things rise to the surface:

You’re craving ease and space.
That image of the bookstore isn’t random. It represents breathing room, the kind you haven’t experienced in a long time. It’s probably less about books and more about wanting a life with less pressure.

Your workload has outgrown your capacity.
The shift you’re describing at work… fewer resources, longer days, constant firefighting, would drain most people. You’ve adapted through sheer grit, and you’ve done it for a long time. That kind of push eventually shows up everywhere: at home, with your kids, in your relationships, in how you feel about yourself.

Your sense of “I can handle anything” has been stretched too far.
When you’ve been working since you were 13 (same, I was a proud deli cashier at 14!), it becomes second nature to step up, keep going, and figure things out. That’s a strength until it becomes the reason you stay in situations that no longer make sense for you.

The spillover into the rest of your life is meaningful.
When your patience shortens, when you’re too drained to be present, when the job starts shaping the kind of parent or partner you can be, that’s important information. It’s not a failure, flaw, or a shortcoming. Your life is sending you signals.

So the real question becomes: how do you understand what those signals are pointing toward?

Here are the reflection prompts I’d walk you through:

• What do you want daily life to look and feel like over the next year?

• If next January looked exactly like this January, what comes up for you?

• What specifically isn’t working right now — the team, the culture, the expectations, the structure, the role, or the values?

• What kind of support do you need to make a grounded decision?

• What possibilities feel quietly interesting or energizing when you let yourself imagine something different?

You’re allowed to want a life that feels good to live. You’ve put in years of effort, care, and consistency. You don’t have to earn permission to rethink your path.

This moment is information and it’s pointing you toward a next step that can support who you are now, not who you had to be to survive the last few years.

Whenever you’re ready, you can choose your direction with intention instead of pressure.

 ❤️ Letter to the Perimenopausal+

Last week, I took my final stroll through the feminine care aisle that I’d been shopping since I turned 12. What a journey from 12 to now with a (somewhat) monthly reminder of the challenges of being born into a female body.

If I’m being honest, that monthly reminder was one of the biggest hurdles I’ve faced in work and life because it’s almost always been debilitating. Every month for a (*ahem **few**) years, comes out to be about 320 times when the world kept spinning while I was in bed, heating pad on, jacked up on Advil.

And for approximately 200 of those months (give or take), I was also working.

How we, as women, experience this monthly and pop into the next Quarterly Business Review and still nail it is nothing short of miraculous.

One time, the worst experience of all the 324 times, I was presenting to site leadership and corporate executives who had flown in for the session. I could barely stand upright from pain and was so weak from anemia that my skin seemed transparent.

But, women never mentioned this monthly experience at work.

So I stood in front of the room, worked it (like I always do 💅), and got accolades from our Site President on my work. I thanked him, walked out of that room, down to my desk to grab my purse, and immediately out to my car. On the way out, I suffered acute blood loss and knew I needed to seek treatment.

After finding out my hemoglobin level was 3.8, my doctor told me she’d never seen someone with a hemoglobin that level coherent, let along standing, walking, and working.

Throughout the years, I saw doctors and more doctors, all of which said something to the effect of “that’s just the way it be.”

Infertility followed. 10 treatments and two visits from the white rabbit.

But again, women rarely mention these things at work.

As I hit perimenopause, it got worse. My a day in bed every month experience became my week in bed every month life. I was starting this business and had everything on the line and so angry that this always presented in my life at the most inopportune time in a way that only karma could laugh at.

After advice from a friend to see a doctor she knows and trusts, I found an answer.

Adenomyosis.

This whole process has reminded me of the incredible power we, as women, bring to the world (work included). As we hit menopause and perimenopause, our CHEMISTRY changes. I say this with emphasis because, if you are a male reader, can you imagine?!

And as I’m learning that chemistry balance driven by significant hormone changes has influence way beyond the reproductive system and shows up throughout our entire body.

Even as I type the word hormones, I can’t even fathom a woman being forced to mention her hormones to anyone at work, for any reason.

The stigma of hormones = crazy woman runs far deep in these corporate walls.

We experience daily impact to many, many things, including:

Brain chemistry + cognition

Estrogen interacts with neurotransmitters, so changes can affect:

• Memory

• Focus

• Mood regulation

• Sleep

Emotional + stress response

With hormonal shifts, the body can respond to stress differently.
Some women feel:

• More sensitive to cortisol spikes

• More anxious or easily overstimulated

• More fatigued after busy or high-demand days

And yet, we persist. We carry on about work like a carefully choreographed tap dance. Tip-tip-tap.

The expectations to prove your “sharpness” and “agility” and all the other words to describe ageism skyrocket… all while your estrogen tanks and you have brain fog so thick you can’t see the other side.

Imagine trying to explain to your boss that you’re still at the top of your game (because you haven’t even PEAKED yet!), but your entire CHEMISTRY IS CHANGING and you had to ask someone to repeat their ask because you, for once in your life, forgot to write it down. 🙃

As Hebba Youssef says so wonderfully…

But man, aren’t we still so fabulous in spite of all of this?

What’s the Point of Work Anymore?

Meet Jacqueline Graf. Jacqueline has worked at Target for more than 50 years. She’s 80, still clocking in, and still deeply connected to the people around her. It sounds like her work gives her something many of us today aren’t feeling: a sense of purpose that fits who she is.

Her story stands out because, for a lot of people, work doesn’t feel like that anymore.

Gallup’s newest research makes that clear:

• Only 18% of U.S. employees say their job gives them a sense of purpose they personally believe in.

• Just 12% say their job lets them pursue purpose outside of work.

• Workers who do feel a strong sense of purpose are 5.6× more likely to be engaged, and far less likely to be burned out.

So the question becomes:
Are we supposed to get our purpose from work?

I don’t think so. At least not anymore.
I think work is simply one place where our purpose can be expressed, if there’s room for it.

Purpose isn’t something you find. It’s something you carry.

You don’t need a perfect job title to have purpose. You don’t need a mission-driven company or a grand career narrative. Purpose lives much closer to the ground than that.

Purpose shows up in:

• the way you care for people,

• the way you solve problems,

• the way you move through the world,

• the things that naturally matter to you,

• the impact you want to have, big or small.

You bring that into every room you walk into.
Work is just one of those rooms.

The real question is: does your workplace have space for it?

When your purpose and your environment fit together well, you feel it. There’s ease. Focus. A sense of contribution. You can see how what you do matters.

When the fit is off, you feel that too.
Your days get heavy. You withdraw. Burnout creeps in. You start imagining alternate lives that feel more like you.

This isn’t a sign you’re “lost.”

It’s a sign the container you’re renting your purpose to might not be the right one anymore.

So how do you connect with your purpose without making it weird?

Here are a few grounded, practical ways to figure out what your purpose actually looks like in your real life… not in a vision board, not in a corporate values statement:

1. Pay attention to what energizes you.
Not the big heroic moments when everyone claps, the small ones. What exchanges, tasks, conversations, or problems leave you feeling more like yourself?

2. Look at how people naturally rely on you.
Your strengths show up in how others experience you: steadying presence, clarity, humor, structure, advocacy, creativity, problem-solving.

3. Notice when you feel proud.
The moments you think, “This is me doing something that matters.”

4. Ask what kind of contribution would feel meaningful in this season of your life.
Purpose shifts. You’re allowed to evolve.

Then: decide where that purpose belongs.

Once you understand what lights you up and what you care about, here’s the next step:

Does your current job create space for that?

• Can you use your strengths there?

• Is there room for the way you naturally contribute?

• Is someone benefitting from how you show up?

• Do you feel like yourself?

If the answer is yes, great! There might be purpose to be lived inside the job you already have.

If the answer is no, that doesn’t mean you need to quit tomorrow or chase a “dream job.” It might simply mean your purpose wants to live somewhere else too, in a side project, in community work, in a creative outlet, in a new direction you haven’t explored yet.

Purpose doesn’t demand you change your whole life. It asks you to honor what matters.

Some people, like Jacqueline, find a role that meets them exactly where they are. We love that for them!

Others need a mix of work that pays the bills and something outside of work that feeds the deeper parts of who they are. Some fulfill that need as a parent, child, caregiver, or partner.

None of those paths are wrong.
What matters is choosing the one that supports who you are now.

Quick Tweak of the Week: 1-to-1 Communication

Before your next 1:1, define 1 thing you want your manager to walk away remembering.

If they remember nothing else, what do you need them to know or decide?

Dollyism.

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