The Most Valuable Thing You Do Probably Doesn’t Feel Like Anything
Has a client or colleague ever thanked you for something, and your first thought was, “I didn’t really do anything”?
What 20 Years of Career Pivots Taught Me About Finding Work That Fits
Twenty years ago this month, I left my corporate career.
I had a job with good benefits, stock options, and a career path I could have stayed on for the rest of my working life.
In the early years of that career, I was very sick. I’d spent years dealing with chronic migraines, sinus infections, and fatigue, and nothing I’d tried through conventional medicine had resolved them. Doctors told me I’d have to learn to “live with it.”
Eventually, someone suggested I try changing my diet. I was skeptical, but I did it. Within days, my migraines stopped, and I didn’t get another sinus infection.
It completely changed how I thought about health. It was the first time I’d encountered an approach that made me question what I’d been taught and showed me there were other ways of understanding what was happening in my body.
That experience was a big part of what sent me back to school for a third degree to become a naturopathic doctor.
Fifteen years ago this month, I saw my first patient.
At the time, I thought I’d finally found the thing that fit. And for a long time it did.
I loved many parts of my work, especially helping people understand their health in ways they hadn’t been taught to think about before.
Over time, I found myself especially drawn to the people who wanted to go deeper.
They weren’t only looking for someone to tell them what to eat or what supplements to take. They wanted to understand what was happening underneath the problem and make changes that affected more than the immediate issue.
That eventually became an important clue about the kind of work I wanted to do.
But getting there wasn't a straight line.
I was living and practicing in British Columbia, Canada at the time. The town had grown enormously while a large industrial project was being built, and almost half of my patients disappeared when the project ended and the workers left.
Then I met JP, who was there setting up the final phase of that project. When his contract ended, he had to go back to Quebec.
During all of this, my mother, who’s from Quebec herself, called to tell me she had terminal cancer. That made the decision about what to do next much bigger than a career decision. I moved to Quebec with him.
I tried to rebuild my practice there, in a language that wasn’t my first and within a very different regulatory environment. I couldn’t do much of what my naturopathic license had allowed me to do in British Columbia. I was also grieving my mother and hadn’t given myself much time to do that.
Eventually, my own health deteriorated to the point that I became bed-bound for a few months
Getting well changed my work again.
Getting back on my feet changed the direction of my career, the same way getting well the first time had.
What helped me recover was a way of eating that went against much of what I’d learned in naturopathic college. I started digging into the scientific research to understand why it was working when so many of the things I’d learned to try as a naturopathic doctor hadn’t.
I found a whole community forming around this way of eating. Through that community, I came across a naturopathic doctor who was using this approach with women around perimenopausal weight loss, and I began collaborating with him.
That work confirmed something I’d already been noticing in my practice. I especially enjoyed working with clients who wanted to look beyond diet and supplements at stress, mindset, patterns, and what was happening underneath their symptoms and behaviours.
I eventually moved away from weight loss and began working with people dealing with chronic illnesses I knew firsthand, including autoimmune conditions and endometriosis. Many had already tried all kinds of diets, supplements, medications, and other approaches.
At the same time, I was going deeper into my own inner work and completing certifications in approaches I was first using on myself before bringing them into my work with clients.
Many of the approaches that work well for most people hadn’t worked especially well for me. I’d found the things that did work through a lot of trial and error, and I’d seen how much of a difference they could make. Then I started seeing the same thing with some of my clients.
The people who kept plateauing everywhere else.
I started recognizing a pattern in the people who responded best to my approach. They tended to be highly sensitive, deep thinkers who experience things differently from the people most approaches are designed for. Those approaches usually help them to a point, and then they plateau.
Around the same time, I realized I was no longer in the place my chronic illness clients were in. Trying to stay connected to that level of suffering was pulling me back into a place I’d worked hard to move beyond.
So I kept working with the people who responded to my approach, whether chronic illness was part of their lives or not.
As some of these clients changed through our work together, they also started questioning the direction their careers were taking.
Sometimes they’d chosen the work they were doing because it made sense. Sometimes they’d built it around what they thought they should want. Sometimes the work had fit an earlier version of themselves, but no longer fit who they were becoming.
I would find myself having conversations with them about what they actually wanted, what direction to take, and how to make their work fit who they were now. I loved those conversations.
In fact, I’d been having versions of them for years, even when I was a naturopathic doctor. I just hadn’t given myself permission to recognize that this was part of the work I wanted to do.
What I couldn't have known in advance.
Eventually, I began focusing on people and their work.
There were a lot of versions of that work along the way. Some things worked very well and still weren’t what I wanted to keep doing.
I can see now that I was asking myself to make decisions about a future I hadn’t lived yet. There were things I simply hadn’t encountered.
I didn’t yet know what it would cost me to keep choosing what made sense over what I actually wanted.
And couldn’t have told you which parts of my work energized me, or which kinds of questions I was particularly good at helping people work through.
I learned those things by living through them.
And every version of my work taught me something I wouldn’t have known otherwise.
It took me more than twenty years to learn how to work through these questions for myself.
Now I get to help other people work through their own versions in far less time.
The people I work with now have usually been doing their work for a while. They have skills, experience, and a body of work behind them. But something has changed, either in the work itself or in them, and what used to fit no longer fits in quite the same way. That’s the work I most want to be doing now.
And I don’t think I’m at the final version, either.
My work is still changing. I’m still refining what I do and who I do it with as I continue to learn and grow.
The difference now is that I don’t expect myself to know in advance what the final version is supposed to look like.
Two anniversaries, and something I'm opening again
I’m grateful I had to learn these things along the way. They’re part of what allows me to do the work I do now.
So, to mark these anniversaries, I’m opening single sessions again, something I haven’t offered in a while.
They’re two hours, focused on one specific question or area of your work or life. They’re $500, and if you pay by September 18, you can use the session any time before the end of 2026.
I’m also offering 15% anniversary pricing on my longer-term work, including the focused round of sessions and mentorship, through September 18.
If you decide within 30 days of your session that you want to continue with any of my longer-term work, I’ll put the $500 toward it. If you register by September 18, that comes on top of the 15%.
If there’s something you’re trying to work out and you’d like another mind in the room with you, you can register for a session here.
If you’re interested in the focused round or mentorship, you can find the details about that here.
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