As someone on a nontraditional career path, I occasionally feel exposed to the “elements,” buffeted by values, messages, and fears that stem mostly from the society I was born within. While most of the time I feel energized and fulfilled, at others, perhaps in transition from one job to another, or needing to redefine my offerings and make new connections, I become fearful. In such times I have learned to slow down, get quiet, and spend time in nature, to remember I have felt and heard a call to healing and writing. I also remember that I am not alone, and I call to mind women friends, people who have lived and worked intentionally, with grace, with a palpable nurturing and feminine energy.
I think of my gentle and humble friend Susan, who in reality is a powerfully dedicated community servant. Susan left college early to work in the corporate world but in time began to make decisions increasingly aligned with her personal values. She changed paths and now works for Habitat for Humanity while volunteering in a restorative justice program.
Susan took a stand and changed her worklife at midlife, when she and her husband moved to a new city. Though she had been the main breadwinner while her husband built a landscape business, she told him she was going to take a job with Habitat for Humanity for $9.00 per hour. Though he was again building a business and was concerned, she was clear on what she wanted to do and ventured forth into work she loved. She helps families prepare for the program and for homeownership as a calm and compassionate mentor. Ten years into her work with Habitat she has a management position and travels about the country overseeing projects.
Another woman I came to know when our respective nonprofits partnered on outreach told me the story of how she’d come to work for an organization serving people with vision impairments. Kim had been working in corporate marketing but was laid off. She began volunteering to read for the blind in an organization that provides radio shows, news, and newspapers in verbal form. The director liked her and soon offered her a job. Nine years later Kim still works at this organization doing outreach and marketing. Devoted to her work, she enjoys the more relaxed environment, her lighter schedule, and the opportunity to help others.
A third friend became a massage therapist, a counselor, and a student of shamanism. She has her own practice and lives with three roommates. An intuitive person with healing ability and great warmth, she brings her gifts into her work, adding new dimension to the physical and emotional struggles of individuals she sees. Donia is so intuitive and gifted that she found her academic studies counterproductive: She says they almost killed her ability to work with people.
These women are wonderful role models for those of us who want to do gentle work, healing work. Their stories reveal their inherent gifts and their intentional approach to accessing their gifts to serve. They aligned their lives with their values. Each has a quality of resolve, of nurturance, and of dedication that inspires me, a mysterious but also tangible inner strength and motivation that guides and holds them in their work. Having made decisions independent of financial considerations or the opinions of family members, their lifestyles and work now reflect their giftedness and their personalities, Susan’s in her gift for helping people find their way, Kim’s in her artful way of presenting to the community dressed and speaking in a unique expressing style and savoring local music through her musician husband. Donia’s in bringing her intuitive gifts into her work with people and with environmental activism.
My own work path has been unusual and circuitous, though looking back I see a common thread running through my choices and the situations in which I landed. An interest in biology and medicine actually turned to psychology and ultimately yoga therapy, and I worked in a holistic center, a drug court, and disability center. I wrote for magazines on holistic health.
I could never have foreseen such a path when I was in college; in truth it didn’t yet exist, and in actuality it is a unique path, a combination of teaching, writing, and healing outside of any particular field that reflects a role in educating about the individual’s role in her own healing and promoting the evolution of healthcare toward wellness, self-care, energy medicine, and spirit.
What these stories show is that there are many types of work, of lifestyle, that in sensing what our hearts, hands, and minds want to do, in noticing the needs in the world and the love in our hearts, we are propelled to carve our paths, and we find openings along the way. As we listen to what truly draws us, what feels right, we find our niche and the accompanying satisfaction and joy. We are happier, healthier, and we often have enough to live on, perhaps less than we thought we needed, but that now feels like more than enough within a context of meaning—a life aligned with one’s calling and abundant with joy.
In moving toward what calls us, we realize we have choices in how we live and work. We feel energized and engaged, and we participate in the community in ways that have meaning for us and that reveal our own beauty. I am so grateful to see living examples of this possibility, this way of being. The stories awaken my imagination and help me remember who I am.
A Woman's Way of Knowing 