Letting Go

My friend H is in her mid 60s and she had worked for a well-known SaaS company for over a decade. Things had been going great for her the last five years, the team she was on really appreciated the value of her skill and experience. Her manager, a couple of decades younger than her took on a reverse mentoring role with her. H needed no help with doing her job well and scaling so others could become like her, but she did appreciate the mentoring on topics that she found harder to grasp given the generation gap. A few months ago, the company went through a major restructuring and H no longer had the job she had worked on so hard to come to love. The first few weeks were rough and she went through all stages of grief. 

Now she's back to being herself, not quite ready to retire but close enough. While she is not excited about not working (or that is what she tells herself and her friends), she looks happier than I have ever seen her in her pictures. She's around the house doing mundane things she likely never had much time for until now. Baking chicken perfectly will get H excited and she'll share pictures of her accomplishment with us. This is a woman who had significant career accomplishments but I can't remember a single time that she shared any of it with friends in a group chat. She'd do the obligatory LinkedIn post and we'd respond but that stayed there. 

I don't think the chicken baked with rosemary from her garden will feature on LinkedIn but the joy that it brings her is unmistakable. I want a bit more time to go by before I ask H if she is not infact happy with the way things have turned out despite the initial panic and the big waves of sadness and disappointment. There is I think a path for H that leads to her happy place and being at home and doing things that brighten her day will lead to it.