Breaking up with work

I wanted work to be something I did, not someone I was. So who was I?

A True Life Built is a living photo essay on starting over and building a truer life. It’s for anyone, at any age, who is finding the courage to begin again. Subscribe for free weekly posts.

Flowers from my colleagues in Kenya.

It happened over Zoom. I was in New York, wearing the same black sweater I had worn, week after week on our calls, the only one I’d packed when I left. She was in Nairobi, sitting in front of the wall I knew so well, the one with my photo hanging on it. Both of our voices were thick with tears.

“This feels like a breakup,” she said. It did—and it was. I was breaking up with the dream job that had carried me overseas, my anchor during the hurricane of divorce. I was breaking up with her, a colleague-turned-friend. She was a daily source of laughter, inspiration and hedgehog GIFs. I sent her gingerbread men when she was sick at Christmas. She sent me coffee when I was working through the night.

It wasn’t her, it was me. I enjoyed my work and adored my team but my job was based in Nairobi, where my marriage had crumbled two years before, and I could no longer bear to return. Giving notice at work felt like severing the last link with my old life. I was leaving colleagues who relied on me, just like I had left my husband. Yet again, I felt guilty and unmoored.

I wasn’t just quitting a job, I was quitting work as I knew it. After 20 years of high-powered positions, I was leaving the nine-to-five and going freelance in order to work less and write more. I wanted to try a new way of living where work was something I did, not someone I was. But this raised an uncomfortable question: without work, who was I?

For decades, I had defined myself by what I did for others. At work, I knew exactly who I was: an executive, a manager, a trusted voice in a crisis. As the global head of communications, I could find the words for any situation. I was the one they called when the jumbo jet crashed or the allegations exploded. I made myself indispensable, and that felt a lot like being loved.

A few weeks before giving notice, I had joined a work call to address the drama of the day. After I calmly weighed in and everyone relaxed, someone exclaimed: “Liz is the org therapist!” Yes, I thought, that’s exactly the problem. Again and again, I set aside my own emotions and soothed the people around me. But as the crises mounted at work and at home, I gave and gave until the well ran dry and my composure cracked. I was utterly reliable—and utterly exhausted. There had to be a better balance.

But in order to leave, I needed to break up with the people who relied on me, to sever that safety net of need. Breaking up hadn’t gone particularly well the first time around; leaving my marriage was seen as the ultimate betrayal. Yet here I was again, on Zoom, saying the work version of, “I’m so sorry to hurt you. I wish there were another way.” Beneath the carefully scripted messages, part of me was pleading: “Please understand.”

My colleague was surprised and stressed, as I knew she would be. Yet, unlike my husband, she did not blame me for abandoning her. Instead, she supported me even as she mourned what it meant for her. “I’m selfishly sad to hear this,” she said, “but I also am feeling a lot of admiration because I suspect it’s really hard for you to quit things, even when you know it might be right for you.”

Her words were the parting gift I never got from my ex, the absolution I craved. She could hold both bittersweet truths: I wished I could stay and I needed to leave, and there was no way to leave without a rupture. But if, through her tears, she could forgive me for leaving, then maybe I could start to forgive myself. Maybe I could do what was right for me. Maybe I didn’t need to be needed in order to be loved.

I hung up the phone and wept. A few weeks later, the actual parting gifts arrived. My colleagues sent a stunning bouquet of anthuriums, like the ones that had grown wild in my lost Nairobi garden. They sent a cozy blanket to keep me company in my morning writing, a long-distance hug from Kenya. They made a beautiful book of goodbye notes, splashed with watercolors, that wished me well and set me free.

The notes said, again and again: we appreciate not just what you do for us, but who you are. They said: “Thank you for believing in our talents, for your care during Covid, for finding a way to laugh when nothing felt like it would ever be funny again. You’ve been a creative role model, a female role model, and a model for finding personal happiness. We honor your effort to build a truer life.”

They said: “Thank you for being Liz, as only Liz can be.”

Morning writing with my blanket to keep me company.

One of the unexpected joys of starting over has been hearing from others on similar journeys. If something resonates with you, I’d love for you to leave a comment, drop me an email or share a post with a friend!

Liz is a writer and photographer based in Brooklyn.