“It’s crazy for me to talk about life pivots without acknowledging that this is the biggest of them all,” Jessica said.
“We had that 10 years together and had just assumed that there was the future forever. So the extent to which that has shaped me is just extraordinary.”
For Jessica, the grief was incomprehensible.
“I would never have imagined it and there’s no silver lining… there’s absolutely nothing that makes it okay in any way,” she said.
“But that cliché around being grateful and leaning into the good things for me is just so powerful.
“Just realising you have to take life and really grab it and squeeze everything good it gives you, ’cause you just don’t know what’s around the corner.”
Grief, said Jessica, was like “recalibrating a compass.” And work became her anchor.
“That gave me some stability and routine through the period where I was re-orientating,” she said.
These days, Jessica works as a management consultant for Deloitte; a job she’d held for more than seven years.
Listen to the full episode of The Pivot below. Post continues afterwards.
Entering the rat race came with an adjustment period, but Jessica treated it like a voyage.
“The first few weeks of a sea voyage are often going to be very tough,” she said. “You might be a bit seasick and getting your sea legs, getting used to bad sleep cycles… And I think I probably did approach starting at Deloitte with that same mentality of that it’s going to be a tough first few months… the important thing is it’s going to get better.”