Tag Archives: women’s professional transition

Barriers: Real or Imagined? (Take 2…)

Posted on February 9, 2012 | Leave a comment

“There was no money,” said my mother in response to a question I’d asked her last week about my grandfather. “He was pre-med at St. Bonaventure‘s,” she said.   My grandfather was a 1st generation American whose Italian immigrant family had settled in upstate New York close to the turn of the 20th century.    His father died when he was very young leaving a family of 6 children.  His mother remarried.  Tony – as my grandfather was lovingly known – never went on to med school. Continue reading →

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Voices of Transition #3: A transition journey….

Posted on January 12, 2012 | Leave a comment

“From now on you’ll be traveling the road between who you think you are and who you can be,” said a letter addressed to Anne Hathaway in her role as Mia in the Princess Diaries, a 2001 movie that my 8-year-old daughter and I enjoyed over the holidays.   Hathaway went on to read more of the letter by saying, “the key is to allow yourself to make the journey. Courage is not the absence of fear but the judgment that something else is more important that fear.”

I frantically jotted down this exchange.   It seemed more profound than the typical Disney “G” rated movie.   Maybe I’d had enough of turkey and relatives? Continue reading →

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Transition Triumphs?

Posted on November 3, 2011 | Leave a comment

“I’ve been reading your blog and thinking ‘ugh’ all this transition stuff,” said Victoria Taylor, CEO and founder of Victoria Gourmet, lamenting that transition would be ahead of her again sometime.  Victoria’s remarks made me wonder, ‘Can we ever triumph over transition?’ Continue reading →

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Analogy: a powerful transition tool

Posted on October 27, 2011 | 5 comments

Last weekend I attended a training session for volunteers for a local youth group.   A wide cross-section of folks attended.  One gentleman, a youth minister from a local church named Sal, spoke at length.   Sal shared — as only you can share on folding chairs in the basement of a school on a Sunday morning — a story that I found surprisingly powerful. Continue reading →

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Miracle waiting to happen?

Posted on October 20, 2011 | Leave a comment

This summer I remember sitting outside my neighbor’s house having coffee and waffles one morning and being totally struck by one of their visitors.  She was a woman who was probably in her early- to mid-sixties visiting with her husband of roughly the same age.   We’d been invited to join our neighbors and their guests for breakfast outside their cottage under a beautiful shade tree – in a pretty garden a few hundred feet from the sea.  What could be nicer with a coffee in hand (ok, decaf) and someone else worrying about my children’s breakfast? Continue reading →

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Must we all be entrepreneurs?

Posted on October 6, 2011 | 7 comments

This week I was thinking about how to define “transition.”  It brought to mind one of my favorite movie scenes of all time, a scene from the Dead Poets Society.  In it Robin Williams plays a high school English teacher, Professor Keating.   At one point he has each child walk to the front of the classroom and stand on top of his desk – looking out at the class.   It is a powerful moment that allows the kids to see that one can get great energy by taking the time to use another lens to look at something familiar.  Continue reading →

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What’s your Agenda?

Posted on September 29, 2011 | 5 comments

” I wasted a lot of time,” confided a long-time friend as she described the years that she had not worked outside the home.  She and I were having a conversation about her decision to return to work.  At the time she had three high school aged children.  The dialogue stayed with me.

A recent conversation got me thinking about this ‘wasted time’ exchange.   A friend was out and about with a visible kick to her step. Continue reading →

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The Baseline: An elusive tool

Posted on September 22, 2011 | 2 comments

Last Sunday my family and I participated in the Boston Marathon Jimmy Fund Walk. For those who aren’t Bostonians, the Jimmy Fund is the fund-raising arm of the Dana Farber Cancer Institute dedicated to supporting research on childhood cancers.  My daughter and I were walking a pace or two behind our team.  We happened to be interspersed with a group called Jessica’s Twinkling Stars.  There were maybe 30 of them including 8 or 10 little girls about my daughter’s age.  Each of the girls had a light purple crocheted hat; some hats were adorned with white flowers.   My eight year old daughter was captivated by the hats. Continue reading →

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Summer Book Review #13: A Gift from the Sea

Posted on September 1, 2011 | 4 comments

I happened upon a cool website yesterday: the Marine Biology Lab in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.  The piece that caught my eye was a story about a professor from UCSF who has started a web series called iBio; a series of free video lectures and vignettes by the world’s best biologists.   There was one story that spoke to my Novofemina side.  Continue reading →

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Summer Book Review #12: Women in Career & Life Transitions

Posted on August 25, 2011 | 8 comments

Do you remember the sock puppet commercial from the early 2000’s?   I think it was for pets.com or some other internet start-up.   A sock puppet with scraggly hair and button eyes would respond with the phrase, “the horror,” to many missives tossed at it.   It was silly and cavalier and – most of the time – just perfect.

The sock puppet’s “horror” voice was in my ear in  Continue reading →

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