The One-Foot Risk: Why I’m Leaving a Career I Loved

I haven’t written here in a while, and for a long time I felt the pressure of that silence; the quiet mental load of knowing I should be showing up, staying consistent, keeping things moving. But behind the scenes, something bigger was shifting. I realized that if I was going to keep talking about managing the mess, I actually had to live it first. I had to step back long enough to make space for what was changing.

Yesterday was my last day in a job I’ve worked in for nearly a decade. And the strange part is, I’m not even fully leaving. I’m staying on part time to support the transition, which means I’m both there and not there at the same time. It isn’t a clean ending, and I don’t think I expected how much that would matter.

I’m not leaving because anything was wrong. The work matters deeply to me. I believe in the services, the team, and the population with my whole heart, which makes this harder to explain. This wasn’t just a job I had; it was a role I worked incredibly hard to grow into, a leadership position I felt proud of and could easily have seen myself staying in long term, maybe even for the rest of my career. And yet, I’m stepping out of it.

Somewhere along the way, something shifted. I found a spark in something I didn’t expect, and instead of ignoring it, I decided to explore it in the only way that felt realistic for me. Not by jumping, but by adding. I kept my full-time role in social services and took on a therapy position on the side. I had been licensed for years but never fully pursued it because I truly believed my original career path was the one. Still, something in me kept saying, just try it. So I gave it a year.

That year changed something. It brought out a part of me I hadn’t felt in a long time; a creative, curious, energized version of myself. I found that I loved the therapy work in a way I hadn’t expected. Not because my other work had lost meaning, but because this felt different, more aligned with who I am in this season of my life. At the same time, I started creating more; writing, building, thinking differently about how I wanted to show up and connect. That spark didn’t stay small. It grew, and eventually it became something I couldn’t ignore. I am learning that sometimes following something new means stepping away from something you worked really hard for, and that isn’t a clean feeling. It’s layered. There’s excitement and sadness, certainty and doubt, energy and fear, all existing at the same time.

This wasn’t just a job, it became part of how I saw myself. The leadership role, the work itself, the way I had built a future around it… it all shaped my identity. For a long time, I believed this was what I would do indefinitely. So stepping away from that doesn’t just change what I do, it shifts how I see myself. And with that shift comes questions I don’t always have clear answers to. Am I really okay walking away from something I worked this hard for? Am I ready to move toward something that feels less defined, less certain?

What I’m stepping into isn’t one clear, mapped-out path. It’s building something of my own, my therapy practice, workshops, creative work, and new ways of connecting with the populations I care so deeply about. It’s meaningful, and it’s aligned, but it’s also unknown. As much as I loved my leadership role, what matters most in this season is different. It’s time with my girls while they still want to spend it with me. It’s being present for the small, everyday moments I don’t want to miss. It’s creating space to build something that reflects who I am right now, not just who I was when I first chose that path.

Alignment doesn’t cancel out grief. I’m not walking away from something I didn’t care about. I’m walking away from something I loved to make space for something new. I don’t think I’m losing something, but I do think I’m becoming something different.

I’ve never been someone who takes big risks. I like certainty, stability, a plan. So this doesn’t look like jumping in with both feet. It looks like stepping forward with one while the other still lingers where I’ve been. And maybe that’s what growth actually looks like, not a clean break, but a gradual shift. A willingness to stand in the in-between longer than expected, to make space before you feel fully ready, to move toward something new while still honoring what came before it.

If you’re waiting for the moment when you feel completely sure, completely ready, completely confident in a change, it might not come. Sometimes growth looks like this, like taking a risk with one foot while the other still remembers the old floor.

And if you’re feeling a pull toward something new, especially in a season where life, identity, and priorities are shifting, you don’t have to blow everything up to follow it. You just have to start making space.