Case Study: Realigning with Integrity After 27 Years

When Susan joined Stay, Go, or Transform Your Career, she was at a breaking point. Here’s her story.

Background

After almost three decades in her academic role and institution, Susan felt emotionally and physically exhausted, isolated, and trapped by decades of “shoulds” that no longer fit. She was a few years from retirement and questioning if she could stay or should pivot out now. If she stayed, she felt “hijacked by academic culture,” weighed down by unfinished projects, and deeply disconnected from her own sense of worth and possibility. If she left, she felt unsure of her transition into the next chapter of retirement or a non-academic next career. 

How the Stay, Go, or Transform Your Career Program Supported Susan’s Clarity

Intake & Reflection: She named the truth she’d been carrying: burnout, loneliness, grief for the community she’d lost, and a dream of living lighter as she moved into her next chapter of life and work.

“I feel like my brain has been hijacked by academic culture… and it’s making me feel a bit crazy.”

Naming & Integrating Career Grief: Instead of bypassing the pain, she learned to name it. She grieved the book she thought she was supposed to write because that’s the story of what “good academics” do. She started to release the academic identity she no longer wanted to carry.

“I’m beginning to have a feeling that I can be proud of who I am without having to self-flagellate about not writing a second book.”

Redefining Identity: She discovered that she was more than her title or publication record and began the journey to reconnect with the teacher, creative, and elder parts of herself.

“I want to be in my older age, somebody who can be that younger person and that older person… The childhood me, the professor me — they’ll always be threads in my tapestry but they’re not the whole tapestry.”

Embodied Resilience: She began tuning into her body’s wisdom, realizing that her repeated foot injuries mirrored a loss of footing in her career and life. We explored creativity practices as ways to move stuck emotions. Experimenting with ways to listen more deeply to her body’s wisdom and connect that with stuck mindsets and behaviors. 

“I break my foot when things are really intense for me… It’s the loss of my footing.”

She started experimenting with somatic practices: “I’m not in touch with my body and it’s very hard for me to consider this important enough to dedicate time to… But I’m glad I’m still working with you because of that.”

Boundaries & Support: She got clearer on how to say no to roles and committees that drained her, and how to protect her energy and financial wellbeing.

“My boundaries are the parameters of my relationships with other people… and I’m beginning to understand the boundaries as the real work. The only thing I said for the crucial next step is valuing and taking time to listen to myself… and not overing.”

Embodied Action — Staying with Choice: Rather than running away, Susan chose to stay with radical honesty, continuing to teach as an act of resistance while freeing herself from old obligations.

“I can have days of peace without self-flagellation… I can figure out how to do my life in resistance that doesn’t have to be a book that feels like it will never get done and depresses you.”

Additionally, Susan found practical relief in the supportive ease of the program:

“I love working with you… I thank you so much for the ability to pay automatically each month. That’s a nice setup. Not everybody has something like that. It’s good and thoughtful.”

Key Insight

For Susan, Stay, Go, or Transform Your Career didn’t deliver a quick fix. It offered a spacious, grounded process to name grief, redefine identity, reconnect to her body’s signals, and choose her next chapter with intention.

Her biggest shift? Permission to stay for what still feels meaningful and let the rest go.

“I feel like I’ve started the journey. I feel pride. And I do feel calmer.”

Tangible Results from Stay, Go, or Transform Your Career

Sometimes transformation is not about leaving immediately, but about claiming permission to live on one’s own terms with clarity, boundaries, and the freedom to stay, go, or transform. Here are some tangible results for Susan:

✔️ She went from feeling “hijacked” and hopeless to recognizing that she’s done enough and that staying can be an act of resistance, not resignation.
✔️ She embraced self-compassion over beating herself up over the external fake sense of institutional urgency and internalized Overing productivity
✔️ She created new boundaries around work, family, and money.
✔️ She made peace with her identity as “good enough” without a second book.
✔️ She started embodied practices to process grief instead of carrying it alone.

When you’re standing at a crossroads, it’s not just about leaving or staying — it’s about doing either from a place of wholeness.

Susan learned that “You don’t have to stay frozen in grief or run away. You can integrate, choose from wholeness, and live the next chapter in alignment with what matters most.”

This is what Stay, Go, or Transform makes possible.