Laura Weidman Powers - Unstuck Together

NEW DEGREE PRESS
COPYRIGHT 2020 LAURA WEIDMAN POWERS
All rights reserved.

UNSTUCK TOGETHER

ISBN 978-1-63676-597-6 Paperback
978-1-63676-242-5 Kindle Ebook
978-1-63676-243-2 Ebook

To Mike. And to Ella.
To #2. And to our next adventure.

UNSTUCK TOGETHER

In September 2017, I was stressed. I was six months pregnant, uncomfortable on a good day. I was spending all my waking hours trying to lead my company through a rapidly escalating crisis. While on the phone with lawyers and in meetings with employees, Id work hard to project confidence, competence, and professionalism. Every time Id hang up the phone or walk out of a room, Id cry.

I was tired; not just physically, not just mentally, but existentially tired.

I felt trapped.

I had a promising career in Silicon Valley. I was CEO of a social impact startup Id co-founded, a role that had landed me in the pages of newspapers and magazines, on stages across the country, and giving interviews on television and radio. We were changing lives, shifting culture, and building power in a way that felt impactful and good.

My husband Mikes career was going well, too. A few years earlier he had made the transition from the practically obligatory post-law school job as an associate at a corporate firm to a more interestingand more humanerole at a top tech company.

We had a rent-controlled apartment in the middle of San Francisco, a sun-drenched deck filled with succulents wed collected over the years. And after years of trying, we had finally a baby on the way.

On the surface, things were going great.

Under the surface, the water was murky. Neither of us were happy at our jobs and we were struggling to envision what better could come next. Wed fallen out of love with San Francisco as it had morphed over the decade from quirky-hippie to cookie-cutter-techie. We were far from our East Coast-based families at the very moment when we were starting our own.

We knew we needed to make a change, but we felt stuck. We didnt know how much change to make, or how to go about it.

Then, one Saturday afternoon that September, during a twenty-minute conversation I had with eight other women, it all became clear.

And that is how, one year later, in September 2018, it came to be that we changed everything.

We had quit our jobs. We had sold most of our things and given up our rent-controlled apartment. We were saying goodbye to San Francisco, our home for the last decade. Our remaining belongings were moving to New York, but we werentnot yet. First, we were going to travel. For a year. With Ella, our eight-month-old baby girl.

In September 2019, after 303 days abroad followed by more than a month spent living in guest bedrooms, we moved to Brooklyn, New York. We got our things out of storage and marveled at what it was like to no longer live out of suitcases and to have access to more than three pairs of pants. We strove to integrate into our new Brooklyn community, joining the local food co-op and putting our daughter in a Spanish immersion, Waldorf-inspired, Montessori playschool that was just a short walk from us in Bed-Stuy. We found jobs in our respective fields and began the now-foreign ritual of commuting to an office and spending time apart from one another all day.

It was shocking how quickly our lives returned to normal.

Until, of course, the COVID-19 pandemic hit New York in early 2020 and we found ourselves in the epicenter of an experience that was stressful and strange in a new way. We were suddenly isolated again, needing to draw on every lesson wed learned while traveling about how to function together as a family in unfamiliar circumstances.

Its now September 2020, and were on the eve of another set of changes. We bought a house a mile away from our Brooklyn rental, and every evening we sort through our belongings, placing items into boxes, trying to pare down to the essentials. We have another hard-won baby on the way. We are six months into this global pandemic that has upended our assumptions about what life would be like in New York upon our returnbut has oddly confirmed the relevance of many learnings and takeaways from our nomadic life abroad.

There are many times when I still feel the tension between putting down roots and getting stuck. But the sense of being trapped and the feelings of angst are gone. Theyve been replaced with a feeling of agency. Because now I know that Im not actually stuck. As hard as the quitting, the leaving, the traveling, and the returning wasI now know its possible. And Id do it all again.

As ambitious, career-, and impact-oriented as I am, I now believe that leaning in is overrated; sometimes leaning out or going sideways is just what the doctor ordered. Changing everything doesnt have to mean youre rejecting anything. And if you set something aside gently enough, it might just be waiting for you when you are ready for it again.

I believe that you can never know where the road not taken may lead, but you can always change the road youre on. And when youre stuck in a rut, sometimes getting out of it is its own reward.

Maybe next time the change I need to make wont involve a passport or a one-way flight. I dont know. What I do know is that, in the future, no matter how stuck I may feel, its possible to get unstuck. And that knowledge in itself is freeing.

The essays in this book are adapted from the blog I kept while on this year of travel, exploration, and reflection. They trace our journey: from the decision to leave our San Francisco lives, to the series of experiences we had on our trip, to musings on what we learned and the choices we made upon our return. They also include some final reflections from a year after our trip ended.

My thoughts are at times unpolished. And in some cases, I suspect I wont fully unpack my experiences or extract the morals and lessons until years from now, long after these words are published. I expect to laugh at some of my navet or lack of insightfulness down the line.

Nonetheless, I hope there is value in my sharing my experiences and the insights I do have, at this moment. More specifically, I hope that the stories I share in this book inspire youshould you ever need itto grab those closest to you, and to get unstuck, together, too.

Laura Weidman Powers
September 2020

Why is there a picture of a horse on that jar?

I stared stupidly at the shelf. I was jet-lagged. I scanned the next shelf down, looking for vegetable purees; maybe something with purple carrots or kale. Something rated six months and up. Nothing too chunky, as Ella, my eight-month-old daughter, still didnt have many teeth.

Preferably the puree would be in pouch form, making it easier to not double dip the spoon, which, our San Francisco pediatricians office had explained to me, could cause the bacteria in my daughters mouth to colonize the baby food. Then, when she later ate her second serving, somehow that same bacteria that came from her own mouth would become harmful. Once I had given Ella some day-old sweet potato and the invisible mold on it had caused her to break out in hives. She did not seem to notice or mind, but I understood hives to be a sign of something bad. If not bad medically, then bad parenting.

Wed given up our spot in that exclusive pediatric practice when we left San Francisco for Rome. Who would I call now if Ella got hives? How did one even say hives in Italian?