Midlife Career Transition and Identity

Chapter 4 Results (Ch. 3 Methodology left out at this time)

Qualitative descriptive content analysis of the interview data, as well as data from the researcher’s visual journal, yielded four overarching categories of experience. These descriptive categories included (a) accepting uncertainty, (b) increased flexibility, (c) increased self-awareness, and (d) increased identity congruence.

Accepting Uncertainty
Descriptions related to the activating event or disorienting dilemma for the career transition were sometimes abrupt, such as a lay-off, a life-threatening event, or a long recovery from a physical injury. Some participants made the career transition after several years of dissatisfaction with their previous career. One participant stated, “I wasn’t happy with what I was doing, who I was working with, the people I was associating with. It was just not feeding my soul. I didn’t feel connected to a bigger purpose…I was asked, ‘What are you waiting for?’” One of the participants transitioned after retirement from a previously satisfying job that had run its course and was less fulfilling at the end. Identity transformation was described by participants and the researcher often as an “emergence,” a being “more fully myself,” and being “who I was supposed to be.”

One transition was prompted by job loss from a down-sizing, which “devastated (me)…I felt I had no identity.” Systems that did not fit ones’ values led to transitions for two of the participants. One participant described feeling like “an abuse situation, working for a system that my ideals, my morality, my ethics do not line up with.” This participant’s experience echoed the experience of the researcher. Another participant shared similar thoughts as she described “not want(ing) to be part of an organization that did that sort of thing” (laid off 114 personnel at a hospital with no notice). Though she was not laid off, the experience affected her deeply. She continued, “It took (a) most dramatic situation to shake the rust off of me.”

Increased Flexibility
One participant explained that “change is painful,” as she reflected on what she learned during transition. “The sooner you can open yourself to the change, the uncomfortable feelings, you can start flushing through them.” She continued, “I’m in anticipation as I know something better will come even in the pain. I always know now I will invite it in, and then flush it out.” Another participant stated, “I’m realizing things happen when they happen. I’m ready now.” A third participant asserted the transition came out of “a lot of soul searching…coalescing into who really I was supposed to become. I was in kind of an incubator phase, and I was able to come out of that.”

Discovering new flexibility in art making. Another participant declared that “art making is the best thing in the transition period, it brings awareness of constructs. It’s freeing.” Another used art such as collage “when conflicted or confused, collage shows what I need.” One participant explained that art journaling was “a very insightful and enlightening process.” Another participant described the change her relationship to art had made during the transition. She stated, “I am more relaxed and really enjoying doing my art. My art felt and looked dull before. It was more like work before…now I don’t feel that way…it’s part of being with this community of sharing and putting more feeling into my art.” She continued to describe the change in her relationship to art making: “Going into this field has allowed me to respond quickly: do smaller work, do art,” as opposed to the formal planned out art she had made prior to her career transition. In her visual journaling process, the researcher described instinctually finger-painting in response to the question “What led to career transition?” She reflected on this free art choice as a desire “to be in touch with the media as I longed to be in touch with patients when I felt frustrated distancing (sic) in the healthcare system” (Figure 2).
Figure 2. Instinctual art making.

Outcomes of art making. A participant described reconnection with a lost part of self through art: “I think as children we are more in touch with who we are as people. I’ve realized I lost that part in my childhood. I lost my ability to get in touch with me. I’m kind of rediscovering her. And she knows answers. She knows!” For another participant, art making was a “grounding experience, because it would take me out of the tumultuous turmoil, the toxicity of the workplace. It (art) became a safe place for me to go…I always feel really relaxed after going through the art making process.” One participant stated that art-making “gives me a connection with clients, community and my Creator—it is my soul work.” The researcher reflected that a collage response to the question of what aspects of identity formation or re-creation remain difficult in the experience of the career transition, spoke to her of calm versus anxiety, of “accepting, trusting the process as I grow in competence in this new field” (Figure 3).
Figure 3. Trusting the process, acceptance.

Increased Self-Awareness
One participant stated she was “excited taking this step and really embrac(ing) that part of me that I haven’t really ever embraced, even though it’s always been there.” Two participants expressed gratitude for the crises that propelled them into transition. One proclaimed “I feel grateful for that job loss!” She described the self-esteem she experienced, “I am now the one who provides comfort and information.” Reflecting on imperfections, after repairing a stained-glass box as response art, the researcher noted “I recognize, now, that my human frailties and imperfections are God’s gifts to me to meet clients where they are. To see, feel, hear their humanness and need and accept them as they are” (Figure 4). Another participant proclaimed the transition experience has “given me a grounding, a sense of self, and a sense of confidence.” A participant described the positive feelings after completing the transition, “I like having more credibility…I get a little more respect than I did…it helps you get stuff done.” In conclusion, the participant exclaimed, “it (the new career) sounded challenging! I like challenges!”

MIDLIFE CAREER TRANSITION AND IDENTITY 35
Figure 4. Accept imperfections, kintsugi, repaired stained-glass box.
As well as expressions of strengths, participants and the researcher also identified weaknesses during their career transition. This included negative emotions such as feelings of worthlessness, depression, frustration, incompetence. Vulnerability was expressed in descriptions of difficulty trusting others and of being a novice after years of experience in their previous career.

One participant expressed feelings of worthlessness, which swung into depression at the start of the transition. Another participant held continued negative feelings toward the organization she left. Yet another participant described “feelings of despair…entrenched in a vocation which often feels ingenuine.” Immediately after her job loss, one participant described loss of feelings of self-worth. For another participant who transitioned several years ago, she wrote that she felt “like an imposter” in the new role. She didn’t see herself as competent, though “I know I am” she concluded. Another expressed a feeling of having “one eye open, one eye closed” as she began the transition. Her transition at the time of the interview was “in its
infancy.” Yet another participant described the stages of transition as “kind of frustrating…but pressure makes diamonds, it turns coal into diamonds.”

For one participant, “Trust and being vulnerable is difficult” and, “it’s still a new environment.” She was gaining confidence, though, as she was no longer afraid or ashamed to ask questions. Another participant expressed initial fears as the new career “seems bigger than me.” She compared her experience in her previous career to the new field: “I was a senior person, now I feel like I am the baby again. Now I don’t know the answers. Will I be good enough?” Another participant stated she thought she had security and stability in the previous career, but “it was an illusion.” Deconstruction and reconstruction, in art making, led to enhanced expression of creativity and acceptance of vulnerability for the researcher. She made an image with alcohol inks, cut it into abstract pieces and butterfly shapes, and reconstructed a new image. She viewed the re-making of an original image into a new image as symbolic of her being open to the vulnerability of “being re-shaped” (Figure 5).
Figure 5. Deconstruction, reconstruction.

Increased Identity Congruence
Repeatedly participants described a belief that they were more fully the person they were meant to be. Their words express this: “I believe I am doing the work that my soul wants me to do, because of the steady deep serenity I experience every day,” “I’m using my whole authentic self now, not just a part,” “I’m coming into my own sense of self,” “…solidified my identity as a helper,” and “I’m a little bit of all of my past, my new career takes little parts of what I’ve done for years and years.” Other participants stated that (their) “identity is coming together--coalescing into who really I was supposed to become. I’m more caring and compassionate, I’m feeling better about myself, feeling better about the world I am in,” “I was in kind of an incubator phase, and I was able to come out of that,” “my identity is in an emergence, it’s coming up,” and “I know that I’m doing what my soul wants me to do, and my heart’s just so full of gratitude. I’m no longer recreating myself, now I am discovering my genuine self.”

Art making, and art therapy were described as a very personal or private activity during transition by a few of the participants. One participant also used collage to answer questions. In response to the questions related to how the researcher used art therapy during/after the transition period, and about the researcher’s relationship to art, the researcher described the collage making and free art making experiences as times when “the images answered my questions and led to new questions.” An encapsulated landscape became a dividing line as the researcher compared her previous career concerns with present career concerns (Figure 6).

Desired authenticity. One participant described her previous career: “it was not a good fit…doesn’t match me.” Another said she felt “trapped,” and several participants expressed dissatisfaction or boredom with their previous career. In collage, the researcher reflected the

Figure 6. Images led to new questions.
desire to be true to self in her career goals. The core of self, the soul, was a dominant feature for several participants’ transitions. Variously the previous career was “not using the creativity I felt at my soul,” “weighed on my soul,” or was “not feeding my soul” and “sucked my soul away.” And loss of a job was “soul-shattering…overwhelming waves of torrential grief attacked my soul.”

After the decision to pursue career transition, several participants described a sense of increased authenticity. “It was a pivotal moment when I ‘woke up’, I feel like this spiritual thread that is meaning, drive and purpose…will carry through the pains of this transition,” explained one participant. In reflection on a mixed media image with layers of paint, pastel, sheer paper, and collage cutouts, the researcher described the new identity as “emerging with my innate human creativity (coming out) into a new freer form of self” (Figure 7).

Figure 7. Emerging identity.
The researcher summed up the effect the career transition has had on her identity in her reflection on a free art making image, which incorporated tracings of her hand that overlapped and “changed” color where they overlapped. The image thus represented the interconnectedness she experienced working with clients (Figure 8). “I am made for connection with others and I’ve changed in response to interactions with clients during and through art making.”

Figure 8. Change.