⏳ 'What got me through' - Midwife spends years preparing for new career chapter
Plus: Ask about resiliency, overcoming imposter syndrome for May's Navigator Q&A
It’s a new month, which means it’s time to announce our Navigator Q&A for May! I’m excited to share that Samantha Ragland, the American Press Institute’s Vice President of Journalism Programs, will be joining me later this month to answer your career questions.
Before joining API, Ragland was a faculty member at The Poynter Institute for Media Studies and served as director of the Leadership Academy for Women in Media. She has 14 years of news industry experience, including roles at the USA Today Network and The Palm Beach Post. She’s developed workshops and trainings on:
trauma and resiliency
overcoming imposter syndrome
increasing creativity and collaboration
building a resilient team culture
This month, I’ll be sharing the Q&A as a podcast in the newsletter instead of a webinar. Submit your questions by next Monday, and selected questions will be included in our recorded conversation. Got a question for Ragland? Send it my way!
The long game: Working toward a new challenge
Kristine Lauria wanted challenge, and she got it.
Last week, I spoke with Lauria for our April Navigator Q&A. She’s a midwife who has attended over 5,000 births over her 37 years in the field, and the subject of the upcoming documentary “Allowed to Birth: The Journey of a Global Midwife.” Her story is an example of what I’ve called the Provisioning phase of the Career River, when you take the time to stock up on the skills and supplies you’ll need to move forward. Because Lauria wanted to make a change, but it took her years to make it a reality.
In this conversation, you’ll find:
Tips for sticking with a job until conditions are right for your next move
Insight on responding to unexpected opportunities
Advice on keeping your identity separate from your career
When Lauria started working as a midwife, she thought she had found her life’s work. But over time she grew bored with the low-risk home births she was attending. This was during the 2008 financial crisis, and in her Colorado community people with PhDs were waiting tables. There were no jobs to be had, so she had to stay in her field.
She decided she wanted to work with Doctors Without Borders, which provides humanitarian medical aid to people in crisis across the world. However, with the first assignment requiring 9 months away from her son, she knew she couldn’t start until her son turned 18 — in eight years.
During that time, her midwifery work was a means to an end, Lauria said, allowing her to make money to support her son, who she was raising on her own. But she took every opportunity to take courses or certifications, volunteering in sub-Saharan African countries, building up her resume for her eventual application.
“I did what I could to continue to develop any skills that I would need in the field that I don't necessarily need as a home birth midwife,” she said. “That is absolutely what got me through.”
Fortunate to help
When the time finally came, she sent in her application over the weekend. They called her right away on Monday.
She’s been on seven assignments with Doctors Without Borders, to places including Sierra Leone, Bolivia, the largest refugee camp in the world in Bangladesh, a search and rescue ship in the Mediterranean, Mozambique, and South Sudan.
“It was definitely very challenging, in the best possible way. It was exhausting, but I got to see things that even most obstetricians in the U.S. would never get to see,” she said. “The bottom line is, there are two lives that are at stake there.”
Note: The next two paragraphs refer to the loss of an infant.
On one of these assignments, Lauria treated a pregnant woman with excessive amniotic fluid that gave her an enormous and painful belly, making it difficult for her to breathe. Lauria was able to drain the fluid and start labor. The baby, which would not have been able to survive even if brought to term due to severe anomalies, was stillborn. Although she didn’t speak the woman’s language, Lauria told her how sorry she was about her baby.
“This woman looked at me, and she grabbed my hands, and she's like, ‘Thank you. Thank you so much.’ She was just so grateful that she could just breathe again,” Lauria said. “I feel so fortunate that I could help her, and that I could get her through this and in the safest and most compassionate way.”
An unexpected opportunity
Although Lauria realized her longtime goal of working for Doctors Without Borders, she’s also been surprised by opportunities that she didn’t plan for, as when an organization called Breech Without Borders contacted her. She now travels the world teaching about breech births. If you’d told her she’d be teaching in hospitals 10 years ago, she said, “I would have just laughed.”
“I never saw it coming. It was nothing I ever thought I would be doing. And I'm thrilled to be doing it, because it's making a huge impact in the birth world,” she said.
Whether it’s stockpiling skills for a job change far in the future, or saying yes when unforeseen opportunities arise, Lauria recommended embracing creativity to find the career that works for you. For any number of reasons, as life throws curveballs your way, there may come a time when you can’t do what you have been doing so far, Lauria said.
“I made a concerted effort very early on to not define myself by my career,” she said. “I saw people who had to leave because of one reason or another. And it just crushed them, and it's because their whole identity is wrapped up in it.”
“Don't define yourself by what you do,” she said, “just by who you are.”
See the full webinar recording here (Passcode: U6LDqD?R)
Happy navigating,
Bridget
Read more Navigator Q&As from the archives:
