From Board Room To Coffee Shop

Write a blog they say...it’s as easy as that they say...well here goes!!!

In 2015 I walked away from a career that saw me as the first female Vice President to lead a sales and delivery unit in the company’s 25 year history. It was the role that saw me earning a six figure salary, living a very comfortable life with a wonderful husband and a beautiful son, outwardly it looked like I was living my best life. I am reminded at this moment of something that my dad always taught me growing up, “don’t look at what other people have Alisa as you never know what they have had to do to get it”.

3 months after I got promoted into my Vice President’s position my late husband ‘Benny’ passed away from a sudden asthma attack, it was the worst moment of my life to date. I smiled outwardly to the world so that I could show everyone that I was strong but internally I was desperately lonely, suffered from severe depression, had terrible bouts of anxiety and fear of being a single parent. I supressed my feelings of grief and anger at God for allowing him to take such a wonderful young man from all that loved and knew him.

I have spent the last 4 and a half years trying to prove to myself and others that I can get back to that Vice President role, six figure salary and luxury lifestyle in some vain hope that it will validate me. So as I prepare to move from the 4th middle management level role I have had in the last three years I have arrived at what I believed was my destination. I am in the final stages of being offered a Managing Directors position setting up a new Client Solutions division for a industry leading property staffing consultancy that has a 5 year growth plan to open 21 locations globally, so I will get to travel again, six figures are on the table, share options, executive package the whole nine yards.... BIG SIGH!!!!!

So why the big sigh I hear you ask; well as I sit here in this small coffee shop I am faced with the reality of my life journey to date and that is this. After 20 odd years of working and fighting to please others in order to validate my sense of belonging in this world, I have come to a place where I no longer want the fancy job title that makes other people say ‘oh wow your job sounds incredible’. I don’t want to put on my power heels at 7am and have my feet hurt me by 9am, I don’t want to sit through meeting after meeting finding new ways of saying the same things. I want to try a new thing, in a new way to find a new version of me or the version that has been screaming to be allowed to just be. I want to get up everyday with the sole intention of making the world a better place and do something that fills my heart with joy.

In reality I want to spend the next 41 years loving my life and living it so that is what I am going to do. I would like to invite you to share in this new journey ahead of me as I document the highs, the lows and everything in between in the hope that it will help you to enjoy moments in life and fill it with helping others. Be brave and finally do things that you may have put on the back burner for many years, things that will fill your heart with joy and gladness. Will it be easy to take this type of leap of faith...NO lol, but as one of my favourite human beings of all time said, ‘A woman in harmony with her spirit is like a river flowing. She goes where she will without pretense and arrives at her destination prepared to be herself and ONLY HERSELF’ - Maya Angelou