Pause Purposefully
Fatima's sabbatical story: The Power of Self-Knowledge and Deep Reflection
This story comes from a podcast interview with Fatima Collins about taking deliberate breaks from work. These podcasts form part of a project I did while on sabbatical in 2024, after leaving my corporate job after 25 years.
When Fatima was in her early twenties, and all her friends were excitedly starting to build their new careers, she grabbed the chance to take advantage of a two-year work visa in the UK. She wanted to travel and reflect on the type of person she wanted to become. She wanted to try and understand herself and how she could contribute meaningfully to the world instead of becoming just another cog in the wheel.
By the way, I’m in awe of somebody who was already thinking like this in their early twenties – at that age my life was pretty much studying and partying with not much thinking about the type of person I wanted to be.
“Making this decision was nerve wracking at the time because I’d been offered scholarships and jobs, and watching all my friends starting their dream jobs,” explains Fatima. “In retrospect it was the best decision I’ve ever made. When I finally arrived in the workplace I knew more about myself and how I wanted to show up. I may have been slightly behind everyone else in the rat race, but I decided I’d run my own race in my own time, knowing what my expectations were.”
Deliberate time-outs
Fatima’s decision early in her career (to travel and be part of the world) set her up for taking more deliberate and intentional career breaks later. She took three more breaks to study an MBA full-time (2008), a sabbatical where she reflected on the type of work she wanted to do (2015), and later a break to grieve friends and family lost during Covid-19 (2021). Each of these breaks provided her with necessary introspection and returned her back to the workforce stronger.
When she took time out to do an MBA something shifted for her, and she describes how that sabbatical was one of the best gifts she gave herself. She discovered new avenues, new ways of thinking and went into a completely different direction after that year.
“It was like, I came back to myself. And I had a good 20 years ahead of me in terms of work. So that one year gave me job satisfaction for the rest of my working career.”
What really resonated with me when speaking to Fatima, was how she’d already, early in life, decided how she wanted to interact with the world. I found during the first three months of my sabbatical that there was a lot of work to do to disentangle my identity, this corporate persona, from who I actually was. When you’ve done so much to become a company (wo)man and align yourself with the company’s spoken (and unspoken) rules to further your career, it takes a bit of time to let go of all of that. I’m not saying it was all bad, but you do sort-of need to play by your company’s rules in the corporate world if you want to be noticed or get promotions – and you do consciously or unconsciously remold yourself to fit into the expected culture. What struck me about Fatima’s story was that because she took a deliberate break early on in her career to travel and learn about herself…she was always true to herself later in her career.
Maybe some of us just learn some of life’s lessons earlier than others, but as Francis Scott Fitzgerald says:
“For what it’s worth: it’s never too late or, in my case, too early to be whoever you want to be. There’s no time limit, stop whenever you want. You can change or stay the same, there are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. And I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you’re proud of. If you find that you’re not, I hope you have the courage to start all over again.”
Wintering
Fatima describes how she took time out during the Covid pandemic to grieve for the friends and family that she lost in the pandemic. In the podcast I mention the book Wintering, by Katherine May.1
The concept in wintering is that people, like nature, need times to rest and retreat. To quote May: “It’s a time for reflection and recuperation, for slow replenishment, for putting your house in order. Doing these deeply unfashionable things — slowing down, letting your spare time expand, getting enough sleep, resting is a radical act now, but it’s essential.”
This made me reflect on the period when I’d just started my last corporate job. As I signed up in February 2021, my mom’s health was deteriorating, and I was overwhelmed by not knowing what was happening to her or what to do. Until you’ve sat with somebody at the end of their life, you don’t know what dying looks like. I was frantically trying to find answers, a caregiver, something or somebody that could help me because I also needed to hit the ground running at work. It was during Covid-19, so when I took my mom to hospital for tests, I had to leave her by the door, and I remember standing in the hallway with her suitcase, which they wouldn’t accept, crying.
Only after my mom was admitted to hospital, was she diagnosed with stage-4 lung cancer. I was allowed to visit her for 30 minutes a day, because of Covid restrictions. My boss at the time was very understanding, but I started that job while being fully immersed in the trauma of seeing my mom slip away. It felt like there was no time for retreat and rest.
My boss was new and building a new department, so we had site-visits, recruitment and getting-up-to-speed to focus on. I wonder, how in an environment like that, we can apply the concept of wintering. In my context (I thought) there was no space for grieving inside my corporate life. It took me a long time to forgive myself for not noticing earlier, not being there enough (although I couldn’t be at the hospital more), for not being a better daughter. All these things you beat yourself up about after a loved one is gone. Oh, I forgot to mention, I was also doing my MBA part-time during this period, and chairing a not-for-profit organisation, but we’ll talk about insecure overachievers in a later article.
At the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic Fatima was retrenched from a construction company, but she came to see this as a blessing in disguise, as she lost many close family members during the pandemic. So how had she managed to take time out to grieve during that time?
“I needed to build myself up again. I had lost so many people close to me and was so broken I felt I couldn’t offer the world of work anything. When I eventually returned to work, I found I was grateful for the return to routine.”
Most companies across the world offer between three to five days of bereavement leave for a close family member. I wonder if this is this enough. If you ask almost anyone what their values in life are, they’ll mention family and when we lose one of our family members, we’re expected to be well enough for work after just a few days. I guess it’s a balancing act. I’m grateful I had an empathetic boss at the time, but I was by no means ready for work after one week off, after my mom passed away. This is another lesson to be learned from Fatima, who recognised that she needed an extended period of retreat and recovery.
In a follow-up conversation Fatima said that we should encourage people to bring their whole selves to work. If we get to know our colleagues, we can be supportive in times of stress and grief.
After many conversations on conscious breaks from work, I believe extended periods of reflection help us to be better leaders and more empathetic towards our colleagues and team members.
Love to know what you think.
