Broken, Changed & Rearranged

Preface

This wasn’t the book I was supposed to write. I never planned on telling this story out loud. It was to remain hidden and never spoken of again. It was my narrative to control, and I wanted to keep it safe. The mere thought of sharing the worst thing about myself with the world made me want to vomit.

I had everything planned out perfectly. I was going to write a leadership book that focused on the behaviors people needed to possess when approaching change. It was going to propel my Human Resources consulting business to the next level. I conducted interviews with several influential leaders, asking them to codify their approach to change. I started a deep qualitative analysis that occupied hours of my life. My book was scientific, unemotional and uninspiring. I was 20,000-plus words deep into my manuscript, but when I read it out loud, I was unmoved. After all I had invested in it, I expected to feel something. Despite my lack of emotion, I was intent on moving forward. I remember saying, Perhaps, I’ll write a book I’m passionate about next time.

The universe had different plans for my life.

Every time I focused on the leadership manuscript, the topic of the current book you are holding began to surface. I fought with myself for months about sharing this story out loud. The book I wanted to write for my ego and the one I was supposed to write were battling for attention. I fought with my deep inner voice for months.

After a full-day writing session that went nowhere, I sat on my porch and cried. I placed my hands up into the air and yelled out loud, What do you want from me? To tell the worst thing about myself out loud? Why do you want that from me?

I was an inconsolable mess who desperately wanted to escape sharing the most embarrassing story of my life.

As I ugly cried on my deck, my deep inner voice whispered, Healing.

After that day, the decision to give life to this book became a reality. It was not easy, and I would be lying if I told you I enjoyed the entire process. There were places I had to revisit that I never wanted to go back to.

Beloved, we all have stories we keep locked away. Some of these stories are meant to help set others free. Here I am. All of me. Sharing one of the hardest parts of my journey with you out loud because I believe it will set both of us free.

Are you ready? I’m still not sure I am.

However, I believe we can do difficult things together.

Let’s do a difficult thing together.

Okay, I’m ready now.

The Beginning

The day after I quit my corporate job at one of the largest global healthcare IT companies in the world, I was standing in my shower thinking it was an accomplishment that I had even managed to get out of bed that day. Marinating in my own misery was threatening to become an all-day state of being.

As the hot shower water hit my head that morning, I felt two emotions: freedom mixed with complete and absolute terror stemming from the belief my entire life was destroyed. I had spent the past ten years of my life laser-focused on crushing every neatly predefined ambition society had placed on me. I was married to a man who adored me by the time I was twenty-four, had two babies by the time I was twenty-seven, and attained a career for which anyone would be envious.

Each time I achieved one of these goals, I ravenously hungered for more because I never felt full. I had made the dangerous assumption that I only needed to achieve the next admirable milestone to ultimately arrive at happiness, but with each achievement I continued to ache in my ever-present misery.

While my life was one big Facebook highlight reel, I was falling apart bit by bit on the inside. I drank regularly and Xanaxed my way through work. My marriage was deteriorating and my children knew me as the mom who was always last to pick them up from daycare. I felt like a failure on all fronts, and my mental health was massively contributing to my inability to function at the last place where I looked like I had it all together: work.

Steeped in shame, I quietly hid from my co-workers, family and friends the huge pile of rubble my life had become. I was terrified of what people would think of me if they knew the bright shiny life I had created was a mirage of epic proportions. The weight of my eventual destruction finally became heavier than my ability to move forward. The one real option I had was to blow up my entire life by quitting the last thing I thought mattered to me: my job. The decision to leave my corporate job accounted for a costly loss of my identity, and without this identity, I could no longer make myself get out of bed the morning after my last day at work.

I was in crisis.

At the time, I thought my life was ruined forever. I know now I needed crisis to step in to show me the life that was meant for me. Crisis was the universe calling me back into existence.

This book is my redemption story, and my reason for writing it is just as much for you as it is for me. If you’re reading this and you’re going through a difficult time, I want to give you a place where you feel seen, heard and known. I want to share advice with you that can help you take action instead of staying in bed with the covers over your head.

If you are in crisis right now, action might seem like a foreign word to you. It’s possible you’re barely getting through each day. My form of action advice won’t sound like traditional self-development books; I promise. When you are feeling broken, action might simply be taking a shower. When you start to feel inspired to make changes, action might be identifying your core priorities. Action will look different depending on each phase you are in now.

Speaking of phases, I have divided this book into three parts: Broken, Changed, Rearranged. These are the words I use to describe each phase of digging myself out of crisis. At any given point in life, I believe we are in one of these phases. Here’s how I describe them:

Broken: Sometimes the colors of our lives are like winter: muted grays, dull whites and shadowy blacks. We are hard-pressed to understand our current circumstances and doubt the darkness will ever end. It’s normal in this phase to wonder what will come next. When this phase goes on for too long, many of us experience sadness, frustration, withdrawal and depression.

While brokenness can come in the form of a crisis, I don’t believe we experience this type of bottom regularly nor should we. In my story, I chose to share with you about crisis, but brokenness can visit us in less intense ways. Broken is the phase in which we experience the symptoms that tell us something in our lives is no longer working for us. This phase is about recognizing that something is broken. Perhaps our current job is draining our energy, or a close friendship has become more toxic than not, or we are giving too much of our time to things that do not contribute meaning to our lives.

If we allow ourselves to lean into this uncomfortable phase, we eventually will be inspired to start taking action. Allowing this winter phase to inspire our transformation is the catalyst for richer and more remarkable days. It prepares us for the beauty that will come next, which is change.

Changed: Other times, life is lived through the colors of fall: rich maroons, bright oranges and vibrant yellows. As fall beckons change, it signals it is time to release the things in our life that no longer add to its beauty. While the broken phase was the indicator that a change was desperately needed, this phase is where we start taking action. In this changed phase, many of us experience renewed energy, glimmers of hope, and a willingness to try to do things differently than we had before.

Depending on your situation and where you’re at, change will not look exactly the same for you. For me, the changes I made were more dramatic because I was digging myself out of crisis. My changes were focused on getting rid of the toxic truths I had accepted, which were contributing to my poor choices. For example, I began practicing saying No when people asked for something from me. There are many other changes I made that you’ll learn about in future chapters.

For all of us in this phase, we work on clearing out old patterns, beliefs and ways of doing things that no longer serve us. It’s about shedding things that no longer contribute positively to our lives. During this phase, we re-evaluate what we want and what we do not. Like the leaves of fall, we are letting things go. This magical season prepares us to make space to rearrange our lives in a more authentic way.

Rearranged: Then, there are the times when you have put your life into such a brilliant new order, you see the world in the spring colors of whimsical teals, airy yellows and lively greens. You are enamored with all the growth around you and all the growth you created from within. In this phase, you will feel renewed, excited and joyful. This is not, however, a constant state of being— you are human after all.

In the rearranged phase, you are reaping the benefits of the hard work you have done. Perhaps you finally made a significant life change, such as pursuing a new career. Or perhaps, you finally put healthy boundaries in place with the friend who was constantly draining your energy. For me, this phase was more about rejoicing in the decisions I had made during my broken phase and the actions I had taken during my changed phase. Now, I was seeing and enjoying the growth in my life because of it.

In this phase, life feels authentic, free and beautiful. You have rearranged your life to reflect the truest version of who you are in this moment in time.

Now that we’ve covered the phases, I want to prepare you for how each chapter is divided. Each chapter in this book is broken into two parts:

Story: I share my own brutally honest and personal story about different phases of my evolution (broken, changed, rearranged). I do not hold back in these sections. The reason I am being my most authentic self when sharing my story is because I believe if I’m honest about my mess, it will invite you to be honest about your own mess. Too often, we think everyone else’s lives are perfect. The reality is, no one’s life is perfect. We are all messy, struggling and beautiful humans who are trying to figure out life. So, welcome to my mess. I hope it gives you the courage to be honest about yours.

From Me to You: This is the section in each chapter where I put on my best-friend hat. It’s the place where I offer advice to you about crisis, change and growth. This is where we have hot tea or red wine together in our pajamas, have a good ugly cry, and then figure out how we’re going to move forward. This was the best-friend advice I desperately needed during all phases of my evolution.

Are you ready to dive into our story?

Let’s start at one of my many new beginnings: I had a breakdown once, and it is one of the most terrible, yet remarkable, things that ever happened to me.

If you’re feeling particularly brave today, I’d love to meet you in Chapter 1, where we can begin reclaiming our lives together.

Love,

Liesl

Part I:

Broken

Sometimes the colors of our lives are like winter: muted grays, dull whites and shadowy blacks. We are hard-pressed to understand our current circumstances and doubt the darkness will ever end. It’s normal in this phase to wonder when we will feel alive again. Oftentimes, survival is all we can manage, and it would be wise to accept that as a true accomplishment. This death prepares us for richer and more remarkable days. It prepares us for the beauty that will come next: change.

Chapter 1

I Used to Rule the World

One sweltering August afternoon in 2016, standing inside my cubicle on the last day of my job, I packed up what felt like my entire life into one small cardboard box.

The contents included:

Three outdated pictures of my two children in cheap craft-store frames

A handful of self-development books

A large vase that had sat on my work desk, serving as a collector of miscellaneous items

Several ridiculous pens: most notably a heart-shaped monstrosity covered in gawdy red glitter

I reflected on the sad state of the box in front of me. It came across as both woefully underwhelming and surprisingly accurate.

Prior to the day I submitted my resignation, I was a human resources strategist at one of the largest global healthcare IT companies in the world. I was part of a select team constructed to focus on a highly visible project impacting the entire business. It certainly had seemed like an exceptional job.

So, how could the contents of my entire corporate career fit neatly inside one lowly box?

For this sixty-hour-a-week position, I had sacrificed everything that existed outside its walls, yet a great deal of glamour accompanied this martyrdom. Flying on the corporate jet, sipping cotton candy martinis in an MLS soccer suite with the CEO, and having our COO quote me during the annual executive forum in front of more than 1,000 people. These types