I quit my job as a finance lawyer

(without a plan)

Hello you,

I’m writing to you from the warmth of my bed. I’ve got a hot water bottle on my toes, and my blankets are weighing me down. This change in the seasons has to be my favourite. Feeling cosy is my happy place.

Anyway, I wanted to write to you this morning to share a big update with you. If you follow me on social media you may already know this, but I wanted to explain a bit more about what led me to quitting my career as a finance lawyer without a plan. Quite frankly, I never thought I’d have the guts to make this decision. So there’s a lot of processing going on in my brain right now, and I am sure there will be more to share in the future when I come to terms with it. For now, this is where I’m at.

This letter has been written in conjunction with the below video on my YouTube channel. If you enjoy my video, I’d very much appreciate you liking, commenting or subscribing over on YouTube to support my creative endeavours.

Okay, here goes.

Throughout my 20s I struggled with my mental health. With anxiety, and bouts of depression. Looking back, it’s shocking to me that I accepted that as ‘normal’. I thought that was what the hard work that the world tells you is required to succeed is. That it was part and parcel of signing up to the corporate world. That it was the price we pay for seeking to obtain all of the things that we are taught from a young age to want to obtain. A house, a nice car, the inanimate things around us that attach to us as humans.

I lived in London throughout my 20s. The whole time I have been driven by my career as a lawyer in some way. I got a job at a big American law firm when I was in second year of University at 19, and shortly after I graduated I found myself in London on track to become a lawyer. First law school, then legal training in a private practice firm, then a junior lawyer in a private practice firm, then a somewhat senior lawyer in a debt fund. I tried big law, in-house, full-time and part-time. And at each juncture the mental health issues returned. I can’t say I didn’t try. I tried hard. Too hard.

A few months after I got married and turned 30 in February, I hit a wall. By this point I had gone in-house and reduced my hours to part-time work, but I was still struggling. I had a new husband and a new decade to look forward to, yet I was still trapped in cycles of anxiety, depression and anger about my career. This is when I decided to look inward, to rewild. I couldn’t understand why I had trapped myself in this career if it was making me so unwell.

It didn’t take long after starting to question my automatic patterns before the mask slipped and I could no longer pretend as though I was okay. I had yet another panic attack at work one day, walked out and never went back. I remember crying down the phone from the toilets of my office block to my husband saying “I just can't do this anymore”. And this time I really meant it. Until then the fear of not knowing what is next for me in life had always held me back. I felt imprisoned in the world that I was living in even though that world was causing me pain and issues with my mental health.

That was a few months ago and already my world is completely changed. I would liken this experience to an awakening. It felt like once I realised the harm I was causing to myself, I couldn’t ‘unsee’ it and pretend like I could carry on. A switch had been flipped and the fuse had gone. Now, on the other side of fear, I am going through many layers of self-discovery. Identity, spirituality, creativity, self. I feel like I am an entirely different person and yet still entirely the same. It’s scary but also now I'm in this deep water and navigating the unknown every single day I am anchored by the fact that I am learning to live my truth as a human first every day. All I feel like doing is stripping back and really getting to know myself, now that I am no longer defined by my career as a lawyer.

I think what I'm learning, or becoming aware of, is that the capitalist society in which we live teaches us and persuades us that there is always more to achieve and that there's always more success to strive for. And that, by definition, that requires us to look external to ourselves to find validation of what success means. In this next season of my life what I truly want is to redefine that vision of success by my own standards. By my own internal world. To let go of the need for external validation. I have a deep desire to stop looking externally for someone to give me the answer and instead to find that answer within myself.

I'm only at the outset so I don't know very much right now but what I feel in my body is a desire for connection to nature, to my creativity, to self-expression, to my true identity, to the people that I love. All of this falls within an umbrella of love. To lead with love and not with fear or with an ache for more all of the time.

It’s funny, when I was younger I thought that life was linear and that as you grow up you build and build and build and build in one line. And that by 30 you have achieved certain things and because you have achieved those things you also are a happy, cantered, grounded, well-rounded person. In my experience, whilst by all measures I have a wonderful life that I am truly grateful for, the key that has been missing that has trapped me in suffering through my 20s is that none of that has been achieved by me truly being myself and living out my purpose in life. I’m called to come back to myself, to the present moment, to cultivating a life slowly and simply that reflects who I am on the inside and not what I think the world expects of me.

I don’t know if this will resonate. I have to trust that what I'm saying is my reality right now and that therefore it is valid. I'm learning to trust the process and to trust my voice, even when I don’t know which way is up or where I’m headed. Thank you for reading this week’s story. I'm so grateful to connect with you.

Until next week, take care.

Love,

Charlie

xxx