Unconventional Gratitude: How Setbacks Fuel Growth and Connection

Gratitude gets tossed around like a seasonal slogan, but the real magic happens when you follow the thread from a hard moment to an unexpected opening. I share how a rough exit from school counseling set off a chain reaction that led to higher education roles, new mentors, a brush with doctoral study, and eventually a beloved position I never saw coming. And when that final chapter ended in early retirement—heartbreaking, identity-shaking—it turned out to be the doorway to reinvention.

You’ll hear the unpolished version of growth: how a job that wasn’t a fit still served as a springboard; how one colleague’s casual mention changed my academic ambitions; how shifting landscapes in education nudged me into spaces that widened my world. Most of all, you’ll see gratitude as a living chain, not a list—people, places, and choices linking together to create a path that could only exist because of earlier disruptions.

That same chain brought me here: creating this show, connecting with women around the world, and finishing a first book now headed to professional editors. If you’re standing at a difficult crossroads, consider this your invitation to map your own cause-and-effect story. Pull the thread. Trace the bounce from one moment to the next. You might discover that the hardest step you’re avoiding is the link that builds the life you’ve been reaching for.

If this resonated, subscribe, share with a friend who needs a nudge, and leave a quick review so more people can find these stories. Then tell me: what tough moment secretly set you free?

Chapters

• 0:00 Rethinking Gratitude
• 0:46 The Chain Of Gratitude
• 1:20 Leaving School Counseling
• 2:31 New Colleagues And Big Doors
• 3:15 Early Retirement And Reinvention
• 6:02 Pulling Your Own Thread

Transcript

Mary: 0:00

Hi, welcome to a mini episode of No Shrinking Violets. I'm going to talk about gratitude today, but I'm not going to talk about it in the typical way. Because especially at this time of year, I think we start to see the memes and the signs on we can put on our wall and all the things about gratitude. And don't get me wrong, gratitude is crucial to rewiring our brain, especially after times of trauma or loss. But I want to think about gratitude today in a different way. And actually, let me clarify because I've thought about gratitude this way most of my life, but I've never seen someone else write something or talk about it. So there was an article recently in the New York Times written by Melissa Kirsch. And she talks about the chain of gratitude. So what she means by this is when we think about where we ended up and we trace back all the things that happened along the way to get us there, we often see those chapters of our life or those pivotal moments even in a much different light. So I will give you an example from my own life. So I started my career as a school counselor, and I could tell you chains of gratitude from that. But let me tell you what happened when I left there. So I had a situation in the high school where I worked that it just became not optimal. And I thought at the time it was really bad. Compared to what I ended up enduring later in my career, it was actually nothing. But at the time I was young and I was idealistic, and I'm like, I'm not going to put up with this. So I made a job change. And that change was supported and fueled by the mother of someone who is actually a special person in my life. But from that stage where I ended up, I didn't, that wasn't a job that fit really well for me, but it was my springboard into my work in colleges. And when I left public schools, first of all, it was something I never thought I would do. It was something my mom was very vocal about because it was a good job. And, you know, she's from the silent generation where you work the same job for your whole life. But when I made that change, which was really different than anywhere I had been professionally to that point, I met some of the most amazing people. Those people are many of them still part of my life now, but it was one of the best working experiences ever. And from that point, one of the people that I met there ended up, we're still friends. And she mentioned a doctoral program that she was in. And because she mentioned that, I decided that I wanted to apply for the program, which I got in. And if you've heard some of my other episodes, um, that's the second doctoral program I did not finish because I just wanted to live my life at the time. Maybe someday I'll regret that. But when I think about the other things also that I gained from that new job at the time, just people and experiences, and going then from that and ending up working at Penn State, which again never was even on my bingo card and just had the most, I'm gonna say, amazing interactions and relationships. And when I think about the gratitude chain in my life, a lot of that was really people, people that I ended up intersecting with that I never would have had some of those things not happened. So had I not had the not great experience at the high school where I worked, having that support to go to a different position, but knowing it wasn't really a great fit. But because it wasn't a great fit, then that was what spurred me to really leave that world and go into the different world of community college. And it expanded my horizon so amazingly through the people and experiences. And then that world started to change. And I that's when I left to go to Penn State. So again, had things not gone in a way that wasn't optimal or things hadn't kind of collapsed a little bit, I would have never really thought about making the job changes that ended up bringing so many amazing people and experiences into my life. And ultimately, really probably the apex of that was the situation that caused me to leave my job and retire early. And that was heartbreaking. I mean, I loved that job. I loved my work, I loved the people I worked with. And I made the really, really hard decision to leave something that I totally was in love with. And what that did was it made me have to step out of the identity that I had for over 30 years and explore other things. And again, the benefits and the beauty that have come from that. I mean, this podcast is one of those things. And through this podcast, I have met women from all over the world with amazing stories and have done things that I never imagined. I'm about ready to send my first book to the professional editors and it'll be published at the beginning of the year. All these things came from that time back in my first job when there were things happening that weren't the greatest. And I made a decision to change, and that really set off a chain of events that really are based in gratitude. So think about something in your life now and start to pull the thread of it. Go back through your life and look at how one thing will kind of bounce off something and lead you to the next thing. And then that will bounce off and lead you to the next thing. And it really is pretty amazing sometimes, the things that lead to where we are that often start with something we think is one of the hardest things we've ever ever had to do. And it ends up having us land in something that really helps us to grow and expand. And I think it's pretty amazing. So thanks for listening today. Go out into the world and be the amazing, resilient, vibrant violet that you are.