For years, I thought I was building a dream career. I worked hard, achieved more than I ever imagined, and built a name for myself in an industry that demanded everything. But when the pace finally caught up with me, I began to question what I was really working toward. This reflection is about how burnout, honesty, and stillness led me to a renewed sense of self.

---

When I look back, I can see how much of my early career was driven by survival, but also by pride.

I didn’t plan on building a career in restaurants. My first job came through a family friend who worked as a controller for a fine dining restaurant. She asked if I could help her with filing and organizing paperwork for their year-end review. I was seventeen or eighteen, just looking to make a little extra cash. But I was a fast learner, and when the project ended, they kept me on. From there, I began learning the business from the inside out.

That small opportunity grew into a full career in fine dining. I went on to work for some of New York City’s most respected chefs: Wylie Dufresne, Kurt Gutenbrunner, and Amanda Cohen. What started as a favor turned into a professional path that shaped my twenties and early thirties.

There was always something new to learn: service, systems, operations, leadership. Every night brought a fresh set of challenges, and I thrived on it. I was good at it. I was paid well enough to support myself, which at that age felt like success.

But after a while, that success started to feel one-dimensional. I was learning, but I wasn’t growing. The pace never slowed. The hours were long, the stakes high, and even though I had built a name for myself in operations, I was constantly running on empty.

In my twenties, I didn’t question it much. I told myself that’s just what leadership was supposed to feel like: long hours, sacrifice, stress you wore like a badge.

By my early thirties, the cracks were showing.

When My Body Said “Enough”

At one point, I was managing a restaurant that pushed me past my limits. Every time I tried to walk through the front door, my heart would start racing. It went on for days, the chest tightness, the shallow breathing, the quiet panic that no one could see. I kept telling myself to push through it, that I was just tired.

Until one morning, I couldn’t walk in. I stood outside, frozen, realizing something was deeply wrong.

That day, I called my therapist, someone I hadn’t spoken to in a while. She told me to text my boss that I wouldn’t be coming in, then to shut off my phone. I remember sitting in the back of an Uber, feeling both relief and guilt.

She asked me to do a reflection exercise, writing down what I was feeling and what I actually needed. When I finished, I called my fiancé and told him I wanted to quit my job, even though I didn’t have another one lined up. He thought it was risky, and honestly, he was right. But I had gone too long ignoring what my body had been trying to tell me.

I thought the answer was just another restaurant job. So I found one. I jumped right back in, and for a while, it felt fine. Until it didn’t.

The Shift I Didn’t See Coming

Not long after starting that next role, my fiancé and I decided we were ready to try for a child. That decision changed everything.

When I found out I was pregnant, the weight of my schedule hit me in a new way. I remember the feeling in my chest when I realized I couldn’t keep working sixteen-hour days while someone else raised my baby.

At the time, I didn’t use words like values or alignment, but that’s exactly what it was. Family had always mattered to me, I just hadn’t been living like it. The realization hit hard. I felt trapped, convinced that all I knew was restaurants.

And yes, some of that was hormones, but a lot of it was truth.

Then the world shut down. It was March 2020, and I was suddenly home for the first time in years. When my son was born that September, everything in my world looked different. What had first felt like loss slowly became space. Space to breathe, to think, to ask new questions.

During that time, I journaled a lot. I wrote down what I wanted life to look like, what I didn’t want anymore, and what I needed to feel like myself again. I sprinkled in a few therapy sessions along the way, mostly for perspective and grounding. The more I reflected, the clearer it became that I couldn’t go back to the same version of work.

That’s when I realized something that would change everything: you can’t build a sustainable career from survival energy. You have to build it from alignment.

Seeing My Skills Differently

Once I finally slowed down, I started seeing my experience differently.

I had spent years solving problems in high-pressure environments, managing people, creating systems, and leading with precision and care. I had developed soft skills and hard skills that went far beyond restaurants: communication, strategy, operations, resilience.

It wasn’t that I didn’t have options. It was that I had never paused long enough to recognize them.

So I started asking new questions:
What industries would value what I know?
Where could I work that respected both my experience and my life outside of it?

I knew I didn’t want to replicate the burnout I had just escaped. I also knew I didn’t want to abandon my nearly two decades of expertise. And as a new mom re-entering the workforce, I didn’t want to lead people right away. I needed to reserve the energy that would normally go to my team for myself and my family.

That’s how I found restaurant tech, joining a SaaS POS company called Toast. It was the perfect intersection: I could use what I knew while learning something new. It was remote, the company offered unlimited PTO (a lifesaver when your toddler gets sick every other week), and most importantly, it honored that life wasn’t just about work.

Once I found my rhythm again, I eventually moved back into leadership. But this time, I led on my own terms.

I was upfront with my leaders that I was a mom first. That I wouldn’t be the person still online past 5 p.m. or answering calls from prospects during dinner. It was scary to say, but necessary.

In return, I worked with focus and intention. I hit my numbers. I protected my boundaries. Because at the end of the day, it was sales, and commission was commission. I knew how to perform without losing myself.

That season taught me something I carry into every chapter now: fulfillment doesn’t come from changing what you do. It comes from changing why you do it.

The Common Mistakes in Career Pivots

Most people approach career change the way I once did, from desperation, not clarity.
We rush into the next thing to escape discomfort, without slowing down to ask what truly matters.
We follow someone else’s version of success instead of defining our own.
We assume a new title or industry will fix the patterns we never examined.

Without self-awareness, clarity, and energy alignment, a pivot becomes a cycle, not a breakthrough.

What Sustainable Career Change Actually Requires

Sustainable pivots start from the inside out.

Deep values work: What actually matters to you, not just in your career but in your life?

Energy mapping: What drains you, and what brings you alive?

Skills clarity: Which strengths do you want to use in new ways?

Capacity building: How do you protect your energy while navigating uncertainty?

Real change doesn’t start with a job search. It starts with remembering who you are underneath the titles and to-do lists.

When you rebuild from that place, the shift feels less like starting over and more like a renewed sense of self.

A Reflection for You

If you’re thinking about a change, start here:
Are you pivoting toward alignment, or just away from discomfort?

One leads to fulfillment. The other leads to new versions of the same stuckness.

You deserve a pivot that truly fits you.