When Leaving Was the Only Way Forward with Jenny Gardner | Your Trauma-Wise Career Guide Ep. 55

In this episode, Cyndi Bennett sits down with Resilient Career Academy member Jenny Gardner, a 30-year social work veteran who reached her breaking point and made the brave decision to choose herself. This is a candid, heartfelt conversation about what happens when a toxic workplace finally takes everything you have left, and what the road back to yourself actually looks like. Jenny's story is not just about leaving a job. It's about survival, recovery, and slowly rediscovering who you are when the noise finally stops.

Key Thoughts

• Carrying 30 years of unprocessed trauma while still showing up every day has a breaking point, and hitting it doesn't make you weak.
• You can be a deeply caring, competent leader and still have nothing left to give.
• Sometimes the bravest financial decision you can make is investing in your own recovery.
• Your body will tell you when a work environment isn't safe long before your brain catches up.
• The space between jobs is not wasted time. It is necessary healing time.
• Detaching from your own body is a survival strategy that eventually stops working.
• You cannot build something new on ground that hasn't had time to breathe.

What This Means For You

If any part of Jenny's story feels familiar, here are some things worth sitting with:

• Your nervous system is not broken. If your body is telling you something feels unsafe at work, that is not an overreaction. It is information. Learn to listen to it rather than override it.
• Leaving is not failure. Sometimes the most honoring thing you can do for yourself is walk away. The key is having enough support around you to make that decision from a grounded place rather than pure desperation.
• The detox period is real and necessary. If you are in between jobs right now, please resist the pressure to immediately pivot into action. Your nervous system needs time to decompress before you have the capacity to build anything new.
• Your emotional backlog is not going away on its own. The things you have been putting in the deal with it later pile are still there. Therapy, community, and intentional self-reflection are how you begin to work through them and create more space for the life you actually want.
• You get to build at your own pace. Whether you are recovering from burnout, starting a business, or simply figuring out who you are outside of your job title, your journey does not have to look like anyone else's.

When you're ready, here are 3 ways I can help you grow your career journey:

1. Free trauma-informed career development resources from my website! Visit https://www.cyndibennettconsulting.com for always up-to-date tips.
2. Ready to build a fulfilling career with trauma-informed support? Join The Resilient Career Academy Learning Community, where trauma survivors support each other, share resources, and develop career resilience in a safe, understanding environment
3. Ready for personalized trauma-informed career coaching? Explore my range of virtual coaching packages designed for different stages of your career journey. Visit my website to find the right support for where you are now. [Visit my website: https://www.cyndibennettconsulting.com/1-on-1-coaching]

DISCLOSURE: Some links I share might contain resources that you might find helpful. Whenever possible I use referral links, which means if you click any of the links in this video or description and make a purchase we may receive a small commission or other compensation at no cost to you.

Transcript

Cyndi: [00:00:00] Welcome back to Your Trauma-Wise Career Guide. This is Cyndi Bennett. This is episode 55, and I have something really special for you today. I have one of my members, Jenny Gardner, who's joining us, and we're going to just sit and have a little conversation, a coffee conversation, if you will, about her journey and her career, and I'm really looking forward to what we have going on.

So, Jenny, I'm just going to turn it over to you. However you want to introduce yourself is lovely. 

Jenny: Thank you, Cyndi. 

My name is Jenny Gardner and I live in Dayton, Ohio area. And I am a retired-ish social worker for the past 30 years. I've worked in child welfare for the past 30 years and after a long journey in that career, I discovered that I needed to pay more attention to myself instead of helping other people. [00:01:00] Especially when I started working with the Resilience Career Academy. So I've moved out of social work and I've started building my own business that will have some kind of personal coaching or personal organization for people, but I really want to focus on working people who are trauma survivors, people who are highly sensitive people, and helping them slow down and organize their lives. 

mostly because I want to help myself slow down

Cyndi: Yeah.

Jenny: I'm helping people.

Cyndi: Thank you for sharing that. You've been on quite a journey, because when you came to me, what, over a year ago, you were still working in child services, right?

Jenny: Yes.

Cyndi: You were white knuckling it through the day, because there were some pretty unhealthy things going on. 

Jenny: I really was. Yeah. It's so [00:02:00] 

to see it in hindsight now, 

but in those last three years, trying to push forward, I realized how much was being demanded of me in my career, not just in the field of the work itself, because I was working with other trauma survivors. I was working with people who were experiencing 

severe trauma on a daily basis. I was working as a first responder in some cases and 

not having the support for me to manage that secondary trauma 

and that compassion fatigue 

over 30 years. I would be able to work through 

a fraction of what I would experience in a day 

and the rest of it, I would sit on the side and "I'll deal with it later. I'll deal with it later." 

And later never came. 

Later never came for me to catch [00:03:00] up on the emotional work, 

the mental work, the physical work, the documentation, all of those pieces. And 

by the time it came to head in the last three years with so many 

state and federal mandates being changed, and more families being in need, and the needs of the families being so much higher, 

I discovered I did not have any clue as to how to keep anything going. 

I was really focused on food, clothing, and shelter just for myself. 

Cyndi: you were surviving the workplace, right? And you were a manager at the time, right? You managed other people who were doing that as well. And so, to be in a position where you weren't getting trauma-informed leadership to support your journey as a manager and a leader in that [00:04:00] company, with all your caseload plus your management, right? Because it wasn't you were just a manager. It wasn't that. You had your own caseload on top of managing others, right? 

Jenny: Yeah. I was a middle manager, so I would have the team that I would manage, 

and then I was managed in conjunction with another team of people. So there were so many different dynamics for me to fit into 

and to 

play a role with. I was fitting into the role of what I'm supposed to do supposed to fit in with my fellow managers? How does it fit in with 

the people that I'm supporting? How does it fit in with my customers? I had three levels of customers: the people that I was supervising, 

my colleagues, and our external customers. 

And it was completely 

out of whack. We didn't have any policies and procedures written down, we had frequent [00:05:00] changes on a weekly basis, sometimes on a daily basis, technology problems would come up, payment problems 

Jenny: and then of course, all of the people who were working in the company. The company I was in at that time was about 50 people and we had massive amounts of turnover and personal conflicts inside the office. And of course the specific population we were working with was suicidal teenagers. And the and their parents, when they have suicidal ideation are not the most stable people to be working with. They have a lot of needs. And if you do not have a good foundation of a trustworthy and a solid company to work with, you're not going to be able to help other unstable people stabilize themselves. 

Cyndi: How was it for [00:06:00] you being a manager, understanding what it's like to manage a caseload for those folks that you were managing, and not getting the support that you needed from your leadership to really have the energy, and the direction, and maybe the training, or example to follow of in your management of others?

Jenny: I started relying upon what I was able to pull for myself from what supports I did have. I joined the Resilient Career Academy. I started working in personal therapy. I've 

intermittently been in therapy myself 

my entire life, but I started bringing those issues to [00:07:00] my therapist. 

I started really focusing on having consistency with the team that I was working with and that was something that was very helpful. I believe I had a good foundation with my team. I had 

six people on my team, seven people eventually, that were all consistent. My team was stable for the last year that I was there, 

and they all had different working styles, they all had different personalities, and as long as I stayed consistent with them and focused on my 

servant leadership practice, the way I felt it. People, would describe leaders as the person who is on the stage coach, who is holding the reins and they're leading the horses who are in front of the stage coach. 

but I, 

metaphorically, am a horse who is also yoked with 

the [00:08:00] other horses, And that's the type of leadership 

that I did with my team. And they were very responsive to it. They were all able to learn and grow. I was able to identify each of their individual needs and meet them at their needs, 

to help them achieve the 

outcomes 

that the company wanted us to meet, to achieve the outcomes that our clients wanted us to meet, 

or that our clients needed, 

and that was about as stable as I could get it. I didn't have any control over, from day to day, the company would say, "Oh, now we want these outcomes," or, "Oh, now we want these outcomes," or, "Oh, now we're going to use this computer tool instead of that computer tool." 

But I was at least able to keep a consistent practice with those seven people 

and bring them along. And three of them, I'm still in touch with. They're used to getting the daily encouragement text messages from me. 

Cyndi: Yeah, because you were a [00:09:00] mentor, even though you didn't have the support of your leadership. You were able to maintain that, which is brilliant, by the way. Because a lot of trauma survivors feel very uncomfortable leading others. But you seem to have really warmed up to it, or taken it upon yourself to really serve them, and to mentor them. And I loved your way that you said that about the horses. I was thinking about you were the lead sled dog, you know, you're out in front. And the lived experience is so beneficial. I found that the lived experience is really powerful. Let me ask you what initiated your decision to join the Resilient Career Academy? 

Jenny: Gosh, it's been so long ago. I think I was reading some of your information online and it just resonated with me. I was like, "Oh, this is ... Get out of my [00:10:00] head." What you were writing was the thoughts that I had. Especially in the very last few years, trauma-informed care has been a huge buzzword in mental health circles. So I've been professionally attending so many trauma-informed care classes, and continuing education courses. And the management I was working with were like trauma-informed care, trauma-informed care, trauma-informed care, 

and they were pushing trauma-informed care down on our customers that we needed to practice trauma-informed care, 

and I would sit there 

and look at them not doing trauma-informed management. 

And 

Jenny: I felt like I was in the twilight zone. I was like how are you guys 

teaching us how to do trauma-informed care 

in this 

[00:11:00] non-trauma informed 

method?" 

I still haven't wrapped my head around it. 

Cyndi: Not unusual. 

Jenny: one thing ... 

that really, was one of the biggest red flags to me that made me start thinking, "Yeah, I really need to 

get out of this field completely because the field, not the field, but so much it 

was so hypocritical. We had a two-day training on 

how to

manage, times when our 

customers 

become emotionally dysregulated, 

how to deescalate conflict, how to verbally 

and physically respond when we're working with a client or a customer who is experiencing anxiety or, 

rage 

and how to calm them down without 

getting them more worked up." 

And 

the training had so much information and had so many 

Jenny: little [00:12:00] videos and vignettes, and 

we even had to stand up and practice putting our hands on each other. 

And I was like, " 

In these three hours, 

you guys have role played and showed me five different scenarios of assault 

and nobody has talked about the fact that we've all experienced this firsthand, maybe just yesterday. 

Jenny: But continuously. We've been doing this for our entire careers, 

and now we're talking about it like you're giving us a training on how to change a flat 

tire." And I was just a panic attack during the entire meeting. All I could do was box breathing the entire time. I couldn't participate. I was just trying to hold myself together and everyone's laughing, the room [00:13:00] was getting loud, people were...

Cyndi: coping.

Jenny: ...slap happy. You know, they were having a good time. It was not a good time for me. It was 50 people in a room that really should not have had more than 10 people in it. It was absolutely overwhelming to me. And I thought, I don't see how this is a training to help me calm people down when I felt like I was in a nuclear reactor.

Cyndi: Did you feel like the training was a check the box activity?

Jenny: Oh, yeah,

Cyndi: Yeah.

Jenny: definitely.

Cyndi: sometimes they're like, "Oh, well, you know, our folks have experienced these things, we should teach them how to calm people down." But they will say, "Do as I say, not as I do. " They don't practice that, right? So we've seen that over and over again where practitioners or providers are expected to deliver trauma-informed care [00:14:00] and they don't have trauma-informed leadership or management. The management themselves, the leaders themselves, do not practice the principles that they teach their folks to use with their clients. And of course there's going to be turnover.

Of course there is because, you're on the front line. You're a frontline worker experiencing vicarious trauma of those who have been traumatized and you're not getting the support that you need in order to manage it emotionally.

Jenny: Yeah.

Cyndi: And especially when you're a trauma survivor, it triggers all your things. Of safety and... right?

Jenny: The emotional labor of doing any kind of health and human services work, the mental labor. I always called it mental gymnastics, because we would have a meeting with somebody, [00:15:00] whether the meeting was just a check-in meeting, a crisis meeting, or whatever, first we would have to do that meeting and manage it, and then we would need to spend time to document it. So me, as a person, I have to relive all of it.

Cyndi: Yeah.

Jenny: To convey all of the information from that incident of chaos, or trauma, or witnessing. Sometimes I'm actually witnessing abuse and neglect to people and documenting it. And this is something that happens with police officers and firemen and nurses and doctors and 

Cyndi: Teachers.

Jenny: And teachers, yes, teachers, exactly. And we as a society wonder why is our customer support people so flat? 

why do I go to the customer service desk at the grocery store and the [00:16:00] person just looks like a zombie? Because 

they've had to detach and become robot-like 

and they can't absorb anymore because they're 

absolutely flooded and they have nothing left to give. 

And it 

was absolutely contrary to everything that I wanted to be when I grow up, when I looked back at how excited I was to go into 

Jenny: social work in college and how I wanted it to be a ministry. I wanted to help people. I wanted to encourage people. I wanted to, show unconditional positive regard to people and be one piece of hope. But it got so diluted underneath all of the heaviness that got laid upon me over days and weeks and years of

Cyndi: Yeah. 

Jenny: this, hold this, hold this.

Cyndi: When I started out early in my career, my [00:17:00] first job was an adolescent substance abuse counselor.

Jenny: Oh, wow.

Cyndi: Yeah, right out of college. And at that point in time, back in the day, like, I'm kind of old, so like, over 30 years ago, when you were in college, they didn't teach you how to take care of yourself as a therapist, as a counselor. Self-care was not a thing. We didn't know how to do that. the one thing that helped me a lot, I really learned how to pray during that time. Because number one, I didn't know what the heck I had gotten myself into. I didn't have the training to do all the things, and I did not even do my own work at that point in time. So I had my own work as a trauma survivor

On top of all the kids, right? That were in the same spot, and how do you tell them to do things that you haven't done yet? And so I burned out easy. I burned [00:18:00] out within two years, I think it was. And I was like, "Oh, no. I, I ... Nope. I don't have the energy," because I had two young kids at the time, and I would come home and I would not have anything left to give them as a mom. And I was like, "That's not what I want for my children. I don't want to come home and be a zombie for them. I want to be present," you know? And so I was like, "Let me just go into something that's less emotional, like business." That was silly. 

Jenny: Tell me more about that.

Cyndi: So silly. That, well, you know, I, what you don't know, right?

Jenny: that goes too. Yeah.

Cyndi: You just don't know. You just, what you don't know, you don't know.

Jenny: You don't know what you

Cyndi: Yeah. Well, that looks, that looks so less emotional. Let me just go into that. No. So, at the end, you were with me when you went through this transition, right? [00:19:00] What I remember, and tell me if this is too much information, but what I remember about what you were going through at that time is you were so exhausted. You were working, I don't know, crazy hours all the time, trying to take care of everybody else, and trying to please your management team who were not pleasable. And they had all kinds of change that they were implementing without any kind of support, and they were adding more to your plate. This is what I remember, and you can stop me if I'm mis- remembering. They kept throwing different things on your plate from a management perspective, like, now you have to document this, and now you have to do this, and now we're going to start measuring this. And I just remember you being so exhausted and so tired. I don't know about you, but what happens with me, when I get over tired, I get so emotional. [00:20:00] And you not sleeping because all of the stress and the tension and all the things, that's what I remember. And then you came into a group one day and you said, "I've decided I'm going to leave." And I was like, "Okay,

Jenny: Yeah.

Cyndi: And then you were liberated. This light turned back on in you that I hadn't seen. You were so overloaded when you first came in and when you made that decision, it was like there is a light at the end of the tunnel and I can, like, breathe.

I just remember there was a lightness about you. All the heaviness that you had been carrying for, I don't know how long it was, maybe it was six months or something that you had been in the program before you decided to leave. But there was this lightness and this energy and this, "Oh, I can [00:21:00] breathe now. Freedom." So talk about that. Because a lot of trauma survivors, especially when they're in toxic work environments or they don't have the skills or the tools in order to manage their own their own triggers or dysregulation in the workplace, they will leave. I mean they will job hop, okay? And then they don't have any job history because as soon as it gets to be, you know, feel dangerous or they can't manage their emotions, they don't have the tools or the skills to be able to stay, right? And so they will job hop and it causes issues with their ability to really move ahead in their career because they don't have that that stable experience, right? And so they will pivot, but some people, it's a knee jerk reaction. "I gotta go now, it's dangerous for me, right? I gotta go. " And there are people like that, that will just flee, they're [00:22:00] in flee, right? I gotta go. But then there are people that pivot strategically, right? And they're like, "No, I'm not going to jump off just quite yet. I want to think about this a little bit more and what's my next step going to be? At least know one step, right? And I'm going to have somebody come on here, at some point, and talk about planning your exit strategy because I think that's super, super important. But for you, what was that like?

Jenny: I had come to a point where I was losing sleep, I was getting physically ill. I was not eating well. I was not spending time with my friends anymore. I was overwhelmed at work. I wasn't even eating at work. I was just totally burnt out and and I was like, "This is not the life I want to live. This is [00:23:00] not how I want to live my life. I've been doing this for over three years, and when I started at the company, it was a startup. They told me, I knew I'm not going to feel, start feeling comfortable in that job for two years, because it's going to take two years for that company to really find their footing. They never really found their footing. After two years, they were still lost and making, I could not find my place in that company. And it was still so chaotic. I felt like it was killing me. I came to a decision where I was like, "I would rather be homeless and dying rather than working here and dying." That's what it was. And of course I'm not homeless. But that was where my identity and my value was so wrapped up in my job, doing a good job. I'm [00:24:00] a overperformer, I am a people pleaser. That's from my childhood issues. I always have been. And for the past three years, in my words, I have failed to achieve my goals in my job, let alone failed to achieve their standards. I can't even hit my own standards in this job. I was like, not worth it. I'm making all of this money and I'm just spending this money on fast food and quick fixes, quick clothes, buying new clothes because the clothes I have don't fit because I can't take care of my body, blah, blah, blah, and this is not the way I want to live my

Cyndi: Yeah.

Jenny: life."

Cyndi: all or nothing sometimes for us, right? So, you get to the end and it's like, "I've got nothing else to lose, I might as well just be homeless." And in our brain, we go to that, "I got nothing. I have no skills left. I'm going to be on the street." [00:25:00] Right?

Jenny: Yes. I'm going to make the decision that's going to end with me being destitute, living under a bridge next to a barrel of fire and a dog, swaddled in a dirty sleeping bag. That was the image I had for myself.

Cyndi: And you were okay with it, as long as you didn't have to deal with that.

Jenny: That would be better than sitting in that office in an uncomfortable chair eating

Junk. it was that I was eating."

Yeah, I just didn't want to be there anymore. And I thought, I don't even care to look for a plan. I cashed out like $20,000 worth of retirement just to not have pressure on myself, so that I could just take time off and work on me. And I'm so glad I did it. It was the best investment I ever made in myself because I'm sure I would've had a stroke. I was having some serious health problems. I don't think I would've recovered from it.

Cyndi: Yeah. Yeah, you were in [00:26:00] a really desperate sort of situation. It was not good, right? And so I'm trying to hold you. I'm trying to hold you from afar. Remind you it's not over. You still have skills. But really when you first left, you really had to detox. You had to go through significant detox with your system where you just had to be. Do nothing, not even think about what your next step was. You had to recover. So there was this point in time where you were just doing self-care,

Jenny: Yeah.

Cyndi: right? Because that's what you needed so desperately was self-care and support and have other people pour into you, and encourage you, and strengthen you from the bottom up, right? And hopefully you got that from the program [00:27:00] and from me, hopefully. 

Jenny: much. Very much. Yeah. Yes. From you, from the writings in the program, from the rest of the team and the program, from my friends, and also just from helping myself be present, letting go of the past. I had 30 years of backlog. I call it the emotional backlog. If everyone who's been working for a period of time, everyone's got a list of things to do that includes the backlog, the things that I didn't get done last month, you know? I probably need to refile 2023 taxes, you know, or those type of backlog type things. I had an emotional backlog things going back all the way to 1995 where from my first job working with kids. I started having memories of situations that happened back then. I'm like, I never really fully [00:28:00] processed that, I never really felt through that of how absolutely atrocious that was. I put my social worker hat on, I worked it like a machine, I kept everyone safe, and I went home and went to bed. And I never acknowledged the fact that I was present during a nightmare. And just letting myself go through that backlog so that I could let the past lie. lie 

Cyndi: Yeah.

Jenny: be present. Because so much of that past was weighing down my present. I couldn't be present with myself. I couldn't be present with anybody else because I had this overshadow of, back in 1995 this happened and I have to be diligent to make sure that doesn't happen again.

Cyndi: Yeah. Let's just camp out there because I feel like this is really important, right? One of the [00:29:00] things that drive me

To do this work is the fact that we're not hearing that trauma shows up in the workplace. We don't hear that. We hear about trauma. We hear about types of trauma. We hear about trauma treatment. We hear about trauma research. We hear about trauma treatment methodologies and all the things, but nobody talks about how it shows up in the workplace and how it sucks energy and capacity out of us. I look at it as though, picture yourself with a ruck sack that's 150 pounds trying to climb the corporate ladder, and the rest of the people don't have that. And you've gotta tolerate and carry the present burdens of the day along with the past [00:30:00] burdens. And by the way, we think that the past is in the past. We can just leave the past in the past, but you can't, because it still shows up. It lives in your body, right? And so what happens is because the past big rocks takes up so much space in our cup, we have very little capacity for all the rest of the stuff, life and children and family and all the things. And if your job is like your job, where it was all consuming, you have very little space then, right, to do it. And so if we're fortunate enough to go to therapy and to start unpacking that, it creates more space where we can take some of those big rocks out and have more room to take on other things, things that bring more pleasure and less pain, right? But that's not the way it always [00:31:00] works. And so you were still at that point where you were carrying that pain and all those things that you hadn't dealt with, the vicarious trauma of all your 30 years plus your childhood that you had and was going in the rucksack every day and you're going on with business like ignoring it like all good trauma survivors do. And we're like, "We've got this. We're just going to focus on today. We've got this. We're not going to worry about that. Nope, nope, nope. We're just going to just worry about this stuff, right?"

And it's, and it wears on us and it just pulls us down and just sucks the energy right out of us. It sucks the life and the joy out of us. So now, you turn this corner, you've left the job. And by the way, so much light I saw return to you. And I remember saying [00:32:00] that to you, it's like, wow, I see so much light- and I remember all the folks in the group saying, "Wow, Jenny, so much light and life in you and energy and, you know, for life at that point in time." You were like, "I don't know what is ahead of me, but all that stuff is in my past right now and so I don't have to deal with that in the day to day." So you took some time in between to kind of do you and to recover, repair. So anybody who's out there hearing this and you're in between jobs, please, please, please take time.

Jenny: Yeah.

Cyndi: Take time to just do you and to give yourself some really intentional self-care. It's so important while you're out, while you're in between spaces to [00:33:00] feed what hasn't been fed in a long time and to really fill up your cup with things that are positive and reaffirming for yourself because you've just been pulled down in a very big bad spot. So that's my encouragement to those, please take the time. It will be refreshing and you'll have more energy to like go tackle the world after that.

So you did that, yay, you, right? And then you were like, "I'm going to start my own business." And I'm like, "All right, let's go. What are we, what are you going to do? " Right? So talk about that.

Jenny: So yeah, I thought I want to start my own business. I want to work for myself. I really enjoy meeting people where they're at and helping them talk through organizational problems. Not problems, but they're opportunities. Yes, that's how I'm turning that award. 'Cause I have it written on my whiteboard in front of me. I don't [00:34:00] use the word problem anymore. I use the word opportunity. Helping other people find that light at the end of the tunnel, taking what I know and have learned in my lived experience and bringing that to other people. Now, I've always just been a well-rounded person, so I don't know what venue that's going to look like. If it's going to look like career coaching, or life coaching, or home organization. 

The funny thing is, this is a tangent. I met with a friend of mine that I hadn't seen for a few months, and I showed him my first business card. And my last name is Gardner, and a graphic designer friend of mine had mocked up a little logo for me with a leaf, a little green leaf on the G that says Gardner. And the name of my company is Gardner Coaching, Organizing, Assisting. And I made a brochure that has trees and [00:35:00] plants on it because I like speaking in metaphors of growth and my personalized plan that I've developed with people has the word seed in it, S-E-E-D, blah, blah, blah, that sort of thing. But I showed it to this friend of mine who is in marketing and he said to me, "You've really got to narrow this down and do one thing. You cannot do gardening, coaching and organizing." And I looked at him, I said, "Gardening. Oh, no, my last name is Gardner." He goes, "Oh, yeah, we really need to work on your marketing."

I was like yeah, we do. " Yeah, we do. He goes, " That might be why my message isn't getting across because he's like, I thought you were doing landscaping." I was like, "Oh, okay, that's fair. I I get it.

Cyndi: Yeah. Well, when you start off in entrepreneurship, there's so much to learn, right?

Jenny: yeah.

Cyndi: And I think for you, what you realize that maybe [00:36:00] some people didn't carry with them is you didn't lose your identity. You understood that you you had transferable skills, and I think for a lot of trauma survivors, that's not the case. They see themselves as only that. They've built this identity around what they did, and now they're not doing it anymore, and now they don't know who they are. So a lot of this beginning journey and the entrepreneurship journey is about understanding who you are, and a lot of times as trauma survivors, we don't get to do that, right?

When we, we grow up, I love this part, talking about identity formation, as youngsters. And you know that because you worked with kids. Normally, we would have a time in our development cycle where we would discover who we are, what we liked, what we're good at, what's our, our passion, [00:37:00] purpose. But when you have trauma as children, you don't get to do that because you are solely focused on safety. That's it. You're not focused on any of that other stuff. So you don't know what am I good at? What do I like? What am I allowed to like? What is my passion? We don't know that.

So a lot of us were like, " Am I allowed to have a desire that is different from everybody else?" Is that allowed? Like it's this aha moment, right? And so a lot of these beginning entrepreneurship, which, you know, it's right after my own heart because I'm only a couple years into the entrepreneur journey. And I've discovered this myself it's like, who am I? How do I want to show up in the world? How do I want people to see me? And what is it that I want to do? And you go through this journey [00:38:00] of refinement, I will call it. It's a refining journey where you're, testing things out to say, " Ooh, I don't like that, for sure. I definitely don't want to do that. Well, I kind of like doing this, but I'm not really sure how that relates to anything." You're throwing stuff against the wall and you want to see what sticks,

So you've been doing that, and by the way, that's very frustrating because as Dr. Kennedy talks about when you're in the learning zone, it's the distance between what you don't know and what you want to know. And in that learning zone, it's frustrating. It's all about frustration, and the longer that you can tolerate that discomfort of the frustration, the more you learn. But a lot of times as entrepreneurs, we are so desperate to make money so we don't starve or we don't lose our house or whatever, [00:39:00] that we have this "I gotta go, I gotta go. " You know what I mean?

Jenny: The checkboxes. We start going through the list of things to do. I have to get these done to get the food pellets, to get the rewards, to get the cash.

Cyndi: Your journey has been just fascinating, that's why I wanted you to come on because you did that for a while and you were busy, busy, busy about trying to start your job and trying to identify what am I going to do? Who's my customer? Where are they and how do I find them and all the things and trying to narrow all of that down so that, you know what you're selling, you know, what your product is, right?

Jenny: Yeah. I met with a couple of different marketers who would keep saying to me, they're like, "What is it that you do? " I was like, "I don't really know yet." So that just kept me coming back. And eventually, the entire month of December, I just closed my computer and said, "I really need to figure out who I am and figure out who I am and what I'm [00:40:00] going to do because I don't want to build a business that's going to turn out to be toxic for myself, because that's what I saw these companies doing. I started working in those careers with the intention of helping people and connecting with people, and wanting to guide them, but all of the mandates that needed to be done for billing, to get paid for it, have nothing to do with social work, have nothing to do with actually holding space for another person,

Cyndi: Yeah.

Jenny: exchanging information, and that's the mental load that couldn't be managed. So I just took that time off and I started thinking about, when was a time when I really felt like I knew myself? Who am I? Who was I? What was it that I wanted to do with my life? You know, and I looked back all the way to [00:41:00] college. I went back to different areas of my life that I was like, this is something that I felt like I was in the right place at the right time. This is where I felt like 

Cyndi: zone.

Jenny: was in the zone. I was really connected with God, with the universe, that I was using the talents that I had in the right way and I was in the flow that the pieces were fitting and start coming back to that. So that's a big piece in rebranding.

I don't know if you've ever seen or if any of your listeners have ever seen the show Bob's Burgers, but in the beginning of Bob's Burgers, his restaurant has a grand opening and then something happens and then he goes, grand reopening, then something happens... Grand re-reopening, then something happens, grand re-re-reopening. And that's how I vision my business. I launched it [00:42:00] on November 1st, and I'm going for a relaunch on July 1st. There be a re-relaunch in in the future. I don't know. I'm not so much worried about the future, but I do know that where I'm at right now is exactly where I'm supposed to be and

Cyndi: I don't know that you have to relaunch it. I mean, you're just in the beginning of development.

Jenny: Yeah, that's it. I'm not thinking along the lines of everything doesn't have to be done correctly today for it to be progress.

Cyndi: Yes.

Jenny: That's how I had to slow it down from the past 30 years of mandates and stuff been piling on top of me. And I say piling on top of me with just in the last three years in child welfare, the documentation mandates got [00:43:00] completely out of hand and we're just never done. But I am a bit of a perfectionist and I get very frustrated when I work for two hours and I'm still not done something. But these are things that I'm building that are houses. They're not coffee tables.

Cyndi: ​I always say that the work develops the worker. We learn a lot about ourselves when we go into entrepreneurship we don't have somebody pushing us. And we start to really learn, " Ooh, I am going around in a circle right now because I cannot show up on social media. We've been on this journey with me. You're in my membership program and I'm still learning. And I'm learning stuff about myself and I'm learning how to show up on social media and how to show up on a camera and, and all the things. And so you're on this journey with [00:44:00] me. You're working on your stuff. I'm working on myself in parallel and learning about it, but there's things like perfectionism that get in the way. And it's better to be done than perfect. There's a lot of different sayings that I have on little sticky notes on my computer. You don't have to get it right, you just have to get it going. I have all of these things that will address certain obstacles, if you will, that hold us back from being able to move forward.

And what I will say as a trauma survivor who's making a go of entrepreneurship, it's really important to remember that you can only go at the pace of your nervous system. Because that capacity that you carried in your cup while you were working, that limited your ability to do all of the things is still your capacity today, unless you've gone to therapy and you've dumped some of it.

So now you just have a little [00:45:00] bit capacity to do your own entrepreneurship. And what will happen is if you overextend, then you'll be stuck. You'll be overwhelmed and your whole body will shut down and you won't be able to work or do any of the things.

Jenny: Yeah.

Cyndi: So small bites, teeny, tiny little things, at the beginning, where you can see little steps of progress will be so helpful. And also support. Getting that support, because a lot of us are solopreneurs and we're doing our own thing. And by the way, not all of these training programs out there are trauma-informed.

Which, if you've been around me for a while, you'll know that I just got out of one. Not all of them are trauma-informed, and so they're teaching you to do things that are fundamentally against what you are doing in your business, for the people that need to be trauma informed. It's kind of like [00:46:00] your whole business of saying, "Oh, trauma informed care," and then not providing trauma informed coaching.

Jenny: Yeah.

Cyndi: And so you have to find your own way. You have to take what you can from those programs, and you have to say, "You know what? That part, won't work for my people, and be okay with that, and figure it out to say, I'm going to pull this from here, I'm going to pull this from here, I'm going to pull this from here, and I'm going to try something different. I'm not going to follow that path. I'm going to figure out what works for my people.

Again, it's that constant, "I'm going to try this. It's going to be a little experiment. I'm just going to try it. " There's no failure here, it's just learning. We're just learning. And so you try it out and you go, "Hmm, did that work out like a ... Nah, maybe not. Maybe I could just tweak it a little bit too, right?"

But that, they say fail fast, but I don't believe in failure, right? I believe what Nelson Mandela says about " I never fail, I either win or I learn". And so there is no failure. You don't have to [00:47:00] fear failure when you're just learning. And so I think for me, that takes out that I'm going to fail thing, right, out of my mind, because that will get in your mind and all those gremlins that are, you know, in there, in your mind, and so it removes that bit and allows you to continue to move forward with grace on what the thing.

So now, tell me about the next step in your journey. So you did this...

Jenny: I did this. Yes. And

Cyndi: did this thing and then ...

Jenny: I did this thing and in January, I wanted to take a small job, a non-emotional job, to just get some money rolling in for a while. And I took a job at a local company across the street from where I live. A local cleaning company yes. I was hired to be and office manager, so that I would be training and doing quality inspections.[00:48:00] 

Cyndi: [00:49:00] Conglomerate. 

Jenny: housekeeping conglomerate and they were grind grind. The new owner was in the office at 7:00 AM. She did not stop for breaks. She did not stop for lunch. She [00:50:00] stayed past five o'clock in the evening. She was there on weekends. They took over a week before my birthday, and I told her, I said, "Look I want that day off. I need a day off and there's been a lot going on here and I need the day off."

And she gave me the day off and then the tone in the office just changed after that. I started noticing, I was like, " I couldn't put my finger on it, but it, I could sense, I was like, oh, there's passive aggressive stuff going on in here, there's unspoken rules. I'm hearing a lot of, 

Cyndi: Started feeling familiar, didn't it?

Jenny: Yeah, she said, she would say something like, "Yes, I know how you people like to take your breaks." I'm like, "I took a half an hour to eat lunch today and you're begrudging me that. Okay." And eventually it came to, she had a conversation with me about my [00:51:00] attendance and ironically it was on a day that I had car problems, but I only live a half a mile from work. So I walked to work. It was no big deal. And it was a thunderstorm. So I walked in the rain to work, got there on time at 7:30. And at 10:30, she has a conversation with me about my attendance.

And I let her go on about it, that she doesn't think that I'm reliable enough because I don't want to work. I just let her talk about it and she described how I asked for a Friday off and how we don't get days off in this job. We have to earn our days off and we get Saturdays and Sundays off. And she expects me to be available to work 40 to 44 hours a week, and that when I'm here, I need to be able to work when the work is there. And I said, "Okay, so what are the [00:52:00] hours?" She's like, "Well, I'm not really sure what the hours are. We might have to cut your hours because there just isn't work here for you. I was like, "Okay, so you want me to be available for a lot of hours, but you don't have a lot of hours to give me. And I was never late and I worked an entire shift. I worked every day except for the one day that I did take off. And there was another day that during the time when the tone was changing, I did start to have a panic attack at work. And I went to her about 10 o'clock in the morning. I said, I need to go home for a little while. I was starting to cry and I was just feeling really upset. I was like I don't feel well. I need to go home." And I think I told her I needed to get myself together. And she told me, "Just go sit down and I'll talk to you later." And I wound up working the whole day, but just feeling really discombobulated the whole day. And she said that was an attendance issue, that I had asked her to leave, but I [00:53:00] did not leave. And another thing was that I had offhandedly commented to somebody who was talking about, If I didn't have to work, I wouldn't work. I was like, "I wouldn't work either." But those three things were her reasons that she was having this verbal admonishment with me about my attendance.

And I told her, "I'm not here to grind at your job. If I need to take time off, I'm going to take time off. I will be here at work for the hours that you are scheduled for me, but my highest priority is going to be myself. And if I am physically ill..." And I didn't say the words mentally ill to her because I didn't want to add that in there, but for me, mental illness, anxiety, depression, panic attacks, those are physical illness because I know that not only with a panic attack, am I all up in my head, but my chest is [00:54:00] pounding, my muscles are tight. I start to have digestive issues. I become physically ill with that. So I told her, "If I'm physically ill, I will not come to work. I don't expect you to pay me for days I don't come to work, but I'm not going to come to work. And I've never done that yet, but I will give you as much notice as I need to, and if I get sick at work, I'm going to tell you that I need to leave." 

And she said, I just don't think you're a good fit here." I was like what are you telling me? " I was like, "Are you telling me you're terminating my employment?" And she said, "Yeah." I was like, "Okay." So I was like, "Great. That's fine with me. Yeah. and although and I was really proud of myself for turning that conversation around because I knew that entire conversation was about her.

Cyndi: Yeah.

Jenny: I had watched her really burning herself out, grinding on this job, [00:55:00] and as much as I wanted to help her, I didn't know how to do the things that she's doing, and I couldn't do the things that she was doing, because she was doing owner stuff. I believe she was jealous or resented me because I'm like, "Okay, it's five o'clock. I've got to go. "

But yeah, so that was last week and it was the right time because after the company had been sold to the new owners, I knew the red flags started waving all over the place. It wasn't a safe work environment. They had everything chaotic. And one thing that I noticed was if we're going to be a company that focuses on cleaning other people's homes, our office and our tools need to be clean. And they weren't. Our office was a mess. Our tools were a mess. Our equipment was a mess. It looked like a dump inside our office. [00:56:00] And I was like, "We do not have any order or cleanliness in our office. How can we be bringing cleanliness to our customers if we don't have it inside this house? 

Cyndi: Yeah. 

Jenny: And that was a message that sat with me alone. 

Yeah.

And that's when I knew I needed to leave.

Cyndi: What was really interesting to me is that you had that space where you had this job for a couple months, and it had clear boundaries, clear expectations, and you were like, ahhh, you just settled right into it. You're so overqualified for that job, by the way, but you settled into it. You came from a very toxic environment, you settled into, "Oh, I've got boundaries and this is wonderful." And I don't care if I'm so overqualified. I'm happy, because I'm making money. [00:57:00] That's what you wanted to anyway. It wasn't like a career, but you're bringing in income, but your nervous system was settled. And then when the changeover happened, your body sensed it. You weren't having panic attacks before. 

Jenny: No.

Cyndi: You weren't having those moments... You were on top of things, feeling good, energy was good. And then when this happened, your body started to respond to, "Oh, hold on, that feels really familiar. I am not going back there again." 

Jenny: Yeah.

Cyndi: Your body was telling you this is not good. This is not safe.

For trauma survivors who are trying to find jobs... trusting your nervous system, not overlooking or overriding what your nervous system is telling you about that role, about that work environment, about those people that you interviewed with, about the whole [00:58:00] team dynamics. If you have that little feeling inside or your body tenses up or whatever your nervous system or your body is telling you, listen to it. Because it might take us some time to catch up cognitively, but our body is hyper alert for any signs of danger and we need to trust that. It's our first defense. 

Jenny: Yeah.

Cyndi: We need to listen to that and pay attention. I think a lot of us as trauma survivors, we override that because we're so used to being in a constant state of alertness. 

Jenny: Yeah.-

Cyndi: But you experienced now a really positive work environment, you knew that and you can see it almost was like a God thing. Like He's just allowing you to see this is what this looks like. You haven't experienced it in 30 years, but this is what this actually looks like. And you would do really well in an environment like that. Then to go and and say, "Oh, hold on. Nope. Heck no. Out of here." And you go [00:59:00] back to, okay, now I can feel the difference with that. I had a time to breathe through starting my own company. And now I have a fresh mind go into and say, What did I learn about that through that experience? And where do I need to pick up and what do I need to work through now?"

Jenny: Yeah. I especially noticed that I learned in that process that when my body does start sending me signals that it's not safe and I start getting defensive, I start feeling that fight, flight, freeze, or fawn, happening in my mind and in my body. One of my first reactions or instincts is to argue with myself and to [01:00:00] convince myself that instinct is wrong. And it reminded me so much of really early childhood things when as a young child, I would say, "Oh, I need this, " or, "I'm hungry," or I want this. " And my caregiver would say, "You're not hungry.

Cyndi: Gaslight your experience. Yeah. 

Jenny: That was my experience for someone else to tell me, "Oh, you're not hungry. You just need to settle down." Or you're not cold," or, "You're not this, you're not that. " Nobody really teaching me what the physical sensations were that I was feeling and how to manage them. Really, really deep stuff of how elemental and how basic that has been. And how did I live for 54 years not understanding basic. Seriously, it's just been in the past [01:01:00] six months that I've been able to recognize what my body feels like when I am physically hungry.

Cyndi: Yeah. Yeah. Because we detach from our bodies because it's a source of pain. We do that a lot as trauma survivors. We will just detach from the pain. And that's a really great survival strategy until it's not. Part of the healing journey is to come back into our bodies and learn how to tolerate the discomfort of what we're going through and to learn to say, "Oh, that's what that is. But also, that's not a bad thing. It's just information.

Jenny: Yeah.

Cyndi: This information is telling me, I need to get something to eat. And that's all good. And that's all good. 

Jenny: Yeah. I didn't do anything wrong. I'm not broken. 

Cyndi: you're not, 

Jenny: It's not a indictment on what is available to eat or who is feeding me. It's just a matter of fact that I need [01:02:00] energy. 

Cyndi: You definitely do. You need energy. And I'm so excited for your journey. I'm so excited to be on this journey with you. We talked the other day in our coaching call and we talked about, oh, where are you going to go from here and how exciting it is and how can I support you on this journey?

Because especially during this time of setup, you need somebody to bounce stuff off of. You need somebody to be able to notice on your behalf where you're getting hung up on different things. What's getting in the way of you being able to break through and also be able to be a sounding board of, "This is what I think, but I'm not really sure." And to have that person kind of come alongside and support. And for trauma survivors who are entrepreneurs, that's so fun. Because we're creating something [01:03:00] from nothing and we're doing it based upon the gifts that were endowed upon us by our creator. And we're finding out who we are and how we're unique and special because every single one of us is. 

Jenny: Yeah.

Cyndi: Yeah. So I'm really super looking forward to this journey with you, and I can't wait to see you shine. It's going to be so much fun. 

Jenny: I'm excited too, 

Cyndi: Yay. 

Jenny: so yeah.

Cyndi: It's been a journey, but you still, your journey's not over yet. 

Jenny: No. No, it's not. It's just May 2nd. One of my favorite verses, and I'm going to paraphrase it here, is "Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us press forward the race that is marked out in front of us." And I visualize journey is just a [01:04:00] perpetual marathon. I am just, I am running a marathon with this great cloud of witnesses, which is I'm just in a crowd of people, and the entire world is running this marathon. Some people are running fast, some are running slow, some are on that side of the street, some are on this side of the world. And at any given point there are about five or 10 people in my circle of influence that are running about the same pace as I am, and I am keeping pace with myself, and observing the people who are around me, and supporting them and letting them support me.

And if they need to slow down, I'm going to let them slow down, and if I need to slow down, I'm going to let me slow down. I don't need anyone to slow down for me, because there will [01:05:00] be people who are slowed down who I'll keep up with. There's always people on the journey. It's about my journey. I don't have to keep pace. I don't have to stay in formation the rest of the pack. It's my journey. 

Cyndi: It is your journey.

Jenny: yeah. 

Cyndi: yeah. 

Jenny: I'm just out here running,

Cyndi: I love that! I love that!

Jenny: just keep running. 

Cyndi: I tell people that all the time. Look, it's your journey. You get to decide how fast you run it, how slow you run it, which direction you're running. If you want to run it backwards, that's fine and I'm just here on the side, i'm just keeping pace, I'm just running alongside.

A lot of times in this world, especially in coaching world ,you have a season with people. There's a season where I have come into your life, and have encouraged you to continue to move forward, and to continue to do the things, and [01:06:00] to learn more about yourself, and to fulfill your role, and your destiny, and to find whatever that is. But I'm not going to be here. You're not going to need me. You're not going to need me for the long term. This is like not a, this is not a lifetime membership thing. 

Jenny: Yeah.

Cyndi: But know that there's no shame in saying, "You know what? I think I'm good. I think I know the next steps and I know where I want to go and I'm heading in that direction and I'm good and I'm okay." It's okay for you to say, "I'm moving on. And I want people to hear that I'm not trying to hog tie you into the membership like forever. 

Jenny: Sure.

Cyndi: I am invested in your success. That is my mantra., When you succeed, I am thrilled. When my folks succeed, I am so happy. I'm so thrilled. I'm so excited for them. I am cheering on the sidelines, because that's what it's all [01:07:00] about. It's all about us supporting one another to continue to move forward. 

Jenny: Yeah. 

Cyndi: Yeah, and that's been so wonderful. So, if I can just ask you one question, maybe take a moment to think about it. What do you think has been the most significant contribution that the Resilient Career Academy has made on your journey? 

Jenny: The most significant contribution the Resilient Career Academy has made on my journey been the affirmation to me that what I'm feeling and what I'm thinking and what I'm experiencing is not flawed. I'm not the problem. It's me trying to [01:08:00] force a solution to somebody else's problem. It's just knowing that other people have been through this, that there is such a thing as a toxic work environment, and when you don't fit, and it's a toxic work environment, the way to fix it, isn't to fix it. You have to let it lie. I think it was you that said sometimes you can't heal if the abuse is still happening. If it's not a fit, you can't make it fit. 

Cyndi: Yeah. 

Jenny: Just because you have the job doesn't mean it's the right job for you. And it's okay to outgrow things. There was a time when I know there was an absolute reason for me to be working in child welfare for 30 years. I do not regret it. But there is nothing in it for me anymore, and I have nothing left to give. I'm done [01:09:00] with it. It reminds me of when I was a little girl, I lived in a very small town and there was one gas station that my family always went to. This is back in the day when the gas station attendant would clean your windshield wiper and put the gas in your tank. They closed that gas station and they tore it down. And when they tore it down, they took the tanks out the ground, and they had to leave the ground open for a year, and they had it walled off with a security fence for a year. And I said, "Why, do they just have that open hole there?" And they said they have to let the ground breathe and let all of the chemicals escape from the ground before they can rebuild on that ground, because it had toxic chemicals in it for so long."

And I come back to that and I think, that was a good [01:10:00] gas station, it served a purpose, but when it was closed, they had to take it out, root in stem and let the ground breathe before they could build anything else on it.

Cyndi: So powerful, such a powerful metaphor. 

Jenny: And that's where I am. I am letting the ground breathe because I did a thing and it's done and moving on.

Cyndi: Aw, I'm so happy for you. I'm so excited to see what the future holds in store for you. I really am. 

Jenny: Me too.

Cyndi: Is there anything else that you would like to say to the listeners or ... I don't know how you feel about them reaching out to you or whatever, but, how would you like to leave this? 

Jenny: Yes. If anyone listening to this wants to piggyback on anything that you and I have said, by all means, drop me a line [01:11:00] through the Resilient Career Academy or however people can reach out through conversation. I love to talk about this, because I believe that there's a reason I experienced all of this, and I don't think it was just for my own gratification. I believe that I'm building a better Jenny so that I can share that with other people and encourage other people through the hope and strength that I have worked so hard to get to. Today is one of several days in a row that I woke up in the morning and I said, "What kind of day do I want to live? Do I want to live a day that Jenny wants to live or do I want to live a day that is trying to catch up on all the backlog?" I said, "Nope, the backlog will take care of itself. The past is taken care of. I'm going to start my day with brushing my teeth and doing yoga. I'm going to live every [01:12:00] day like today is the day I live the life I love."

And find it today it's so better to live that day today rather than say, "I'm going to live that life when I retire, or I'm going to live that life when I reach a certain age, or when I'm done with this project, or when I'm done with this job, because that day will never come."

Cyndi: Yeah. Yeah, that's so powerful. All right. We're just going to close this up. Thank you so much for joining me. It's been wonderful. I think you and I can talk forever really. 

Jenny: Yes.

Cyndi: We can get on a call forever and 

Jenny: I love it. Yeah.

Cyndi: just chat. I love that you are willing to share your story. Thank you so much for sharing your journey with us and your career journey with us. And it's been awesome to watch you grow, and flourish, and learn all the tools and [01:13:00] skills, and put them into practice and watching you just shine. I'm so blessed to see you shine. So thank you so much for joining us today and we'll catch you next time. 

Jenny: Thanks. Thank you very much. 

Cyndi: You're not walking this path alone. Every step you take toward a trauma-wise career is an act of courage, and I'm here cheering you on. If today's episode resonated with you, share it with another survivor who needs to hear this message. Together, we're rewriting the rules of career success. Keep rising, keep healing, keep building.