The Woman I Haven't Met Yet

I used to think 20-hour days in the booth meant I was serious about my business.

Then I stopped to ask myself an honest question: when have I ever not worked like this?

As a Foreign Service Officer, I was on duty in a way that doesn't clock out — living overseas means the job doesn't stay at the office; it comes home with you, because you are always representing the U.S. in that country whether you're technically working or not. Later, as a watch officer in D.C., I was in a role built entirely around the assumption that something could happen at any hour, and someone had to be there when it did.

So when I say I'm looking for some "work-life balance" now that I'm running my own business, I've got to be honest: I don't really know what that is. I'm learning it for the first time. I've spent almost my entire career in roles where being fully "off" wasn't really the design.

And it's not just the career. My kids are grown and out of the house now. I'm also squarely in what people call the sandwich generation — closer to my mother these days, more available for her, at exactly the same moment my own children need me less. Both of those things are supposed to free up time. Instead they've mostly freed up a lot of quiet, and quiet has a way of asking questions you didn't have time for before.

I recently read something a fellow voice actor wrote about perimenopause — about being in a season where you don't quite recognize the woman you're becoming, caught in the space between who you were and who you're not yet sure of. I commented that it resonated with me, and it did, more than I expected. Because it's not just her season. It's mine (and many of my friends') too, just with a different set of causes. For me, it's an empty nest, a mother who needs me differently now, a career that never once taught me how to power down, and a business that will happily take every hour I hand it.

I'm not just building a business. I'm meeting a version of myself who has never had to answer the question "what do you do when nothing is on fire, no one needs you at this exact minute, and the house is quiet?" And being busy and focusing on building a business is way easier than figuring out the answer.

I'm 22 years into a nervous system trained for readiness, trying to teach it that readiness is very different now. And, at the same time, learning who I am without the roles that used to answer that question for me.

If you're coming out of a career built around always being on — a shift, a post, a watch — or you're watching your kids leave while your parents need you more. Maybe, like me, you don't know who this new person is.

But I'm kind of curious about her. And I can't wait to meet her.