Since I last wrote, Gloria Steinem passed. It feels devastating, similar to when RBG passed.
Since I last wrote, Gloria Steinem passed. It feels devastating, similar to when RBG passed. Like, we knew she was old and it was coming – in fact, last week I was working with a client on how to organize one of her iconic Talking Circles and were advised that her health was ailing – and yet still, the headlines took my breath away. Something about knowing she was still here and doing her work and opening her home made me feel protected, like the bottom wasn’t going to fully fall out for women. She wouldn’t let it.
But now, here we are. Walking the earth without one of our protectors, having to grow up to protect ourselves.
Gloria spent her life arguing that imagination isn't a luxury or naive, but lived experience, the hope for a better future was the raw material she used to create real change. One of my favorite quotes (I now know after her passing is): “Without leaps of imagination or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.”
Now if that isn’t a Live-Laugh-Love worthy quote to hang in your house, I don’t know what is. The idea of dreaming as planning is exactly where I am in life.
Thanks, Gloria, for the words.
Owning the narrative around your new dream
In honor of Gloria, I want to speak truthfully about what I want, who I am and the narrative, MY narrative around that.
So, here's a truth I haven't said out loud until now: I didn't quit my job to spend more time with my kids. That's the story I told for a long time, it’s easier to say and most people then respond with “Ohh that’s great, good for you.” Like somehow lessening my busy-ness to have more time with my kids is honorable or the “right” thing to do. It is if that’s what you want, and though there was an ounce of truth to it, it was far from the whole story and not really what I wanted.
The story is messier and not as easily succinct or wrapped up with a bow. I had hit burn out, I was burnt out. I felt undervalued, like I was hopping through hoops. I watched promotions pass me by, and somewhere along the way, I had outgrown what was available to me. I just didn’t have that language at the time, so it came out as a non-defined, “I just got to go.”
It's taken eighteen months to get from that inner knowing to actually saying it out loud and understanding it. I moved through all the stages — bitterness, anger, grief, denial, LOTS of self-righteousness — before I landed where I am now: acceptance.
I’ve come to know one thing for certain: It isn’t about the company or the role you held, it's about your own growth finally outpacing a job that was never built to hold all of you forever.
And almost every woman I've talked to inside Re:Brand has walked some version of this same road. I’ve come to know one thing for certain: It isn’t about the company or the role you held, it's about your own growth finally outpacing a job that was never built to hold all of you forever.
That's what I mean when I say “your dream outgrows your dream job.” You think you'll be somewhere forever, right up until the moment you're not — and it isn't your dream anymore, because you're not who you were when you first wanted it.
From dreaming to planning to rewilding
So now I'm in a new chapter I'm calling rewilding. It's coming back to myself, and I mean that almost literally. I used to organize full moon skinny dips on the beach — women I knew, women I'd just met, all of us running into the ocean together naked after pulling angel cards and calling in what we wanted in the new month. I was a yoga teacher. My hair is naturally curly, and for years I’ve straightened it into the perfect beach waves to be tidier, safer, more buttoned-up, more the same.
Somewhere in there, my whole range of self-expression shrank down to the smallest, safest version of me. I didn't even notice it happening until I was already standing outside the cage I'd been put into playing the nice corporate girlie. In the last year and a half I have realized that my cage is gone, but I am still circling the same small patch of ground, pacing from side to side in the same shape of my containment,
Rewilding is busting out of that, and coming back to me, my hopes, dreams, plans, courses, clients, manifestations! All the things that I couldn’t see clearly until I came back to myself. Movement, getting outside, starting a podcast — they’re all part of coming back to the bit of me I had quit long before I ever quit my job.
And it has been liberating, and I’m inviting you in!
Introducing Re:Wild The Workshop
Re:Wild, a live two-hour workshop on Zoom, Thursday, October 8. We'll get into the idea that most of us aren't confused or overstimulated or unsure – we're over-domesticated, and it's reversible!
This is for you if...
You left the traditional path — corporate, a title, a "should" — to build something on your own terms, and somehow ended up more scheduled than ever
Productivity still feels like proof of your worth, even though you know better
You're craving a version of "success" that doesn't require performing, comparing, or explaining yourself
You're ready to feel more like yourself — in your body, your instincts, your actual life — not just more optimized
Catch up with the pod
Next episode drops next Tuesday, and if you haven’t listened to Franchesca Hashim yet, you’re sleeping on some gold!
Curiosity, Quitting, and Building a Brand from Scratch with Franchesca Hashim
Or listen on your fave platform:
xx,
Cat
