At some point in the last year I stopped asking how do I build more — and started asking something I had never made space for before.
What do I actually want?
Those are very different questions. And for most of my career I didn't have the luxury of the second one.
There was always more to build. More to prove. More ground to cover. More stability to create.
And then somewhere in this season of life — quietly, without a dramatic announcement — the first question started to lose its urgency. And the second one moved in.
Four and a half years into my startup chapter I found myself thinking about things I had never let myself think about before.
Not what's next in my career. But what I want the last chapter of my career to look like.
Not how do I keep growing. But can I retire at 55?
Not what role do I want to grow into. But what role would I actually enjoy showing up for every day.
Those are different questions than I have ever asked myself. And asking them felt strange at first. Almost disloyal — to the version of me who had always been building toward something.
As if slowing down meant giving up. As if choosing presence over trajectory was somehow less than.
It isn't. But it took me a while to believe that.
And then something happened that forced me to get very clear very fast.
I found out I might be laid off.
Three weeks of sitting with the possibility that the role I was in — the company I loved, the colleagues I had built something with — might be ending.
And I want to be honest about what those three weeks felt like. Because it wasn't just one feeling. It was every feeling at once.
Fear. Real financial fear. Grief for the team and the work we had built together. And — underneath all of it — something I didn't expect.
Relief.
A quiet, complicated, almost guilty sense of relief. That I might get to stop. That someone was forcing me to ask the question I had been too busy to ask myself.
What do I actually want?
I have been described professionally as a bit of a unicorn.
Traditional healthcare. Telehealth. Clinical nursing. Operations. Startup. Leadership across all of it.
A lot of experience. Not a master of just one thing.
And in those three weeks I sat with a question I had never fully asked myself before.
Was I too startup for traditional care and too traditional for startup? Where do I fit when I am a combination of things that doesn't slot neatly into any one category?
I have never fit neatly into categories. Professionally or personally. And for a long time I saw that as a weakness. Something to explain. Something to justify.
But sitting with it — I started to see it differently.
The combination is the thing.
For the first time in my career I told myself I would not take the first role offered to me.
I would be intentional. I would ask what I actually wanted before I said yes to anything.
That sounds simple. But for someone who had spent her entire career building for protection — saying yes because someone needed her, taking the role because the stability required it — being intentional felt terrifying.
I sat with those fears. And I chose carefully anyway.
I returned to traditional healthcare. And this time — unlike every time before — I know who I am as a leader.
I also reduced my startup role to advisor. Chose a position closer to home. Chose to travel less. To be home more. To put my energy toward the people and things that fill me up.
My family. Johnny. My children. My friends. Exercise. This podcast.
For most of my career work was my identity. And I am not saying that was wrong. It was necessary. It was survival. It was protection.
But I am 45 now. And the question has changed.
It is no longer — what can I build?
It is — what do I want my life to actually feel like?
A few questions to sit with:
- Has success ever arrived and felt different than you expected — quieter or more complicated than you imagined?
- Is there a version of what you want now that is different from what you wanted five years ago — and have you given yourself permission to want it?
- If you faced an unexpected change, what would that window of uncertainty reveal about what you actually value?
- What would it mean to choose your next chapter intentionally — not from fear or urgency — but from a clear sense of what brings you joy?
If this episode resonated with you I'd love to hear from you at faith@stillbuildingpodcast.com — I read every message.
You're not alone. You're not behind. You're not finished.
You're still building.
— Faith