Finding your calling is all the rage these days. It’s sexy to find your calling. Everyone’s doing it, it seems. Finding your calling is the new black.

But if you’re one of the many who haven’t yet found it, the process of seeking it can make you feel psycho, like you’ve got a giant “L” plastered to your forehead and the Universe has shunned you, just like the mean kids did back in 7^th grade.

I remember the feeling well. Back in 2007, after quitting my stable job in medicine – which I once believed was my calling – I found myself floundering, thrashing around like a fish in a washing machine, feeling completely ungrounded, confused, and lost, not to mention toxically anxious. After twelve years and $200,000 worth of painful medical education, along with eight years of practice experience, I found myself unemployed and seemingly unqualified to do anything else. Plus, my husband didn’t have a job. Oh – and we had a newborn. And a mortgage. And graduate school debt.

Yikes.

The three years that followed became a desperate search for what would come next. Trust me. It wasn’t pretty.  I wound up writing a memoir that every publisher on the planet rejected. I made art nobody bought because the economy tanked. I had to sell my house and liquidate my retirement account. And when that money ran out, I had to borrow money and start loading up my credit cards.  After two desperate years, I finally took another job in medicine, this time at an integrative medicine practice – only it still wasn’t the right job, and I wound up quitting, at a financial loss.

I had many dark nights of the soul…

Becoming A Butterfly Read More→