what grounds you?
thoughts on work and identity (2022)
I wrote this in 2022 after having a mind fuck/realization surrounding my small business Veggie Mom Club, making pivots in my career, and a conversation I had with Health Coach Daphne of DoingWell a year prior during the pandemic, but after everyone got their two doses of the COVID-19 vaccine. New York was reopening, and we were all beginning to recover, full of hope, but still traumatized.
This post went live in June of 2022, but sharing these thoughts made me too self-conscious, so I removed it.
3 years later, I decided to revisit my Substack around the same time this was written, so it only feels right to re-share.
Daphne was giving away free 1:1 coaching sessions at the time, with the theme being navigating career and personal life after the pandemic, back when getting hired seemed like an olympic sport, along with navigating so much new territory in relation to the pandemic aftermath.
She validated my hard work in ways I never expected a stranger to, while reminding me that I’m actually doing well.
Daphne, if you’re reading this, I am eternally grateful for you.
Naturally, thankfully, a lot has happened between now and then, but I think revisiting ideas around what grounds us and the ideologies we carry with us surrounding why we choose to do what we do, will always be something we should be giving second, third, or fourth thoughts to.
2022:
Hi, happy Monday. How are you? Have you eaten today? Had some water? A hug?
The sun is out, and summer is officially here. The more I think about time and how it seems to simultaneously not really exist, and yet still manages to move so quickly, the more summertime sadness I feel. Because no matter what happens, good or bad, life moves on, and that thing (or string of things) you went through, remains just that thing or things you went through.
But you know what comes with sun and summer? Delusion. Pure happiness induced delusion. Because despite it all, a new season is here with new opportunities for growth, epiphanies, and joy. Thank you, Vitamin D, light, and warmth.
For the past say, three months or so, I’ve been grappling with thoughts on identity and work, trying to articulate my realizations in a single post. Well, this is going to be a rant on adulting, entrepreneurship, and trying to find your footing in this world.
So buckle up, if you’re interested.
Veggie Mom Club is my baby, but I’m finding myself having to examine my relationship to it as I (and it) grows. Do I still want the same things I once did? Is this working? Does this fit me? Do I feel good?
Navigating between creating, rejection, being an advocate for yourself and your work, finding what works and what doesn’t, and separating your personal identity from your business, is emotionally and mentally taxing.
One thing I know to be true is that VMC has always been a small piece that gives me a sense of calm, and I’m happy to know that no matter what, it will always be there as long as I continue to put effort into it. And hey, it’s mine.
When dealing with change, especially in work, I had to constantly fight the need to explain myself and what I’m doing.
Isn’t that feeling familiar? The pressure to conform into one digestible lane? The need to be understood, seen, and validated? The need to always have some sort of concrete definition of who you are and what your’e about? This is partially due to trauma, but… still. In a world where people seem to want to hear your life’s trailer reel in 30 seconds or less… especially in New York- it can be hard to unlearn those patterns. Which is why surrounding yourself with the right people is important. But that’s a different post meant for another day.
But I do think I owe you all some transparency on the direction Veggie Mom Club is moving into. This also feels like I’m manifesting, since I’m getting my thoughts out of my brain and into yours.
Veggie Mom has evolved for sure, but maintains to be a hub centered around health, and the ways food, community, and expressing yourself creatively are closely intertwined.
A video that will always stick to me is by health coach, Daphne Javitch of DoingWell, about routine, and how it has to be the thing that grounds us, the thing that we return to.
It made me think of how my relationship with VMC has evolved in the recent years, and how I used it as a way of routine, becoming a grounding practice. Things like my monthly community dinners and collaborations. But as the pandemic quickly destroyed what I thought was a definite path, I had to constantly check-in with myself and my relationship to my business, to make sure my needs still aligned as I quickly evolved my way of thinking and being.
Veggie Mom Club has always been a safe space for me. After the pandemic hit and I could no longer cater as my way to make $$, I had to pivot. Turning it into a full-time business (health coaching), was beautiful and meaningful work- but it no longer grounded me.
While running Veggie Mom Club in 2019, I used to have 3 jobs, working with nonprofits and babysitting, before being hired full-time. So VMC was my creative outlet, but also a way to fill an emotional void.
I quit my full-time job two months before Covid was even a thing, and my business that was once rooted in catering and food, really started to take off, and opportunities were knocking on my door:
A 3-month chef residency in Italy at Villa Lena starting in April 2020, a dinner series and kitchen space partnership at In Cucina in Hell’s Kitchen that I was actively planning for months, set for my return from Italy, alongside a 6-month dinner theater catering job I scored that I was also in midst of planning.
When Covid finally became a thing, I lost everything. Thoughts like, who was I without my work? What will I do for survival, now? Did I make a mistake to quit my job?
I did what I had to do, and health coaching became my means of survival because the job market was trash, and I was getting rejected from job applications left and right.
The line between my work and ME began to blur. Figuring out how to navigate my business as a separate entity versus an identity, is a process to learn and a definite growing pain.
My needs changed, as I:
1. Found myself in a loving and supportive relationship, and I was no longer compelled to seek that love through community in the same way. Worthiness, perhaps? Validation? These are all themes that can be easy to suppress when feeling extreme loneliness, rejection, and needing to be seen and loved. When things were crazy in my world, I had Veggie Mom Club and my work goals to remind me that I still mattered, and could rest in my originality.
And while I do find rest in knowing my originality is sacred, I feel worthiness regardless of what work I’m able to pump out or who I’m with, just by being and existing in myself. Again, this took time.
2. Explored different creative avenues.
3. Allowed myself to want different things, instead of being rigid and crippled with shame for changing my mind. To be fair, I still felt crippling anxiety and shame, but it passed, and I pushed through it until the art of not giving a fuck prevailed.
When you feel like you have something to prove, and then you realize your own opinion matters more than the ones you’re trying to prove yourself to, your intentions begin to shift, which means your motivations shift, too… Which can be scary, and a phase all in itself. But that brief pause between the old you and the you you’re growing into is okay and necessary. Weird… but necessary.
What grounds you? What ideas need to be revisited?