Go Where You are Wanted, Know Where You are Welcome

What if we stopped trying to prove we are worthy and instead found the place we are valued?

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

Lisa Lucas, publisher at Pantheon and Schocken Books, was ousted in a corporate reorganization at Penguin Random House this week and she live tweeted the entire day. It was epic. Her first post, which may well be the funniest, was this one:

Four minutes later she posted the Publisher’s Weekly story announcing the news. The two posts, in quick succession, immediately reminded me of Tressie McMillan Cottom’s saying: “The institution cannot love you back.” All that you give, you may not get back.

Throughout the day Lucas’s posts were filled with humor and grace. She apologized to the many authors who lamented not having her at PRH to shepherd their work. She joked about going to sleep without setting an alarm. And reading for pleasure! (When I left book publishing it was more than a year before I picked up a book again. Nothing will destroy something you love more than a job that you hate.)

But I was most struck by the posts where Lucas openly mused that while she’d love another job in book publishing, maybe she won’t be offered one and that would be fine! She called her job in book publishing the culmination of a “lifelong dream” but that she has done other things. If a publishing job doesn’t materialize, she will figure it out. In fact, she points out what a small (and, importantly, white) world publishing is, noting that an offer to work in books again would have to come from one of “exactly five CEOs.” 

She goes on:

Only stay where you are wanted. Know where you are welcome.

Can I have that cross-stitched on a pillow please?

I read these posts not long after learning that yet another organization I’d hoped to bring my talent to had decided to pass on me. 

It’s been a long two years for me. By the end of 2022 it had become clear that the job I loved so much didn’t love me back. My well-being was at risk and it became clear it was time for me to leave. But I didn’t have a plan B. I’d poured everything I had – everything I didn’t give to my family – into that organization. I thought it was possible I’d have that job until I retired. Now what?

My career has had a lot of twists and turns. I left books and media because I did not feel welcome or wanted there. Tech has its issues with inclusiveness, but for me it felt like a breath of fresh air compared to the insular and cliquey world of publishing. I enjoyed the work I did as a marketing and comms leader and the people I worked with were smart and interesting — my favorite combination. It was certainly more lucrative than media had ever been. There’s probably a strand of the multiverse where I took a different turn in 2015 and I am still working in marketing and communications at some software company.

I didn’t have a plan to become a nonprofit executive. An opportunity to make a difference in the lives of professional women presented itself and I literally could not turn it down. I’m forever grateful for the staff I got to work with and the community of job seekers I got to work for. I changed their lives and they changed mine right back. I learned so much from them. The notes they sent me when I stepped down filled me with a joy that’s hard to even articulate. 

It was, in many ways, the only job I ever truly loved. Not the culmination of a lifelong dream, exactly, but the job where I felt the most myself – where I felt that incredible alignment of doing work I was good at in service of a cause I believed in. 

I’d love to work at another organization advancing the cause of women and girls. I’d love to help people of a variety of backgrounds access great jobs. I’d love to use my skills to advocate for equity and justice. I see opportunities everywhere to make a difference and have an impact on the world. I hope to be given one soon. 

And if I am being real honest here, I wish I had quickly landed, ideally with some grace and elegance. To have been offered an amazing job months ago so I could have made a splashy announcement that says “Look who’s back!” I was hoping to make it look like it worked out so perfectly I must have planned it this way all along. 

But it’s turning out to be messy and complicated and hard. Truthfully, I’m starting to wonder where I’m wanted. Where I’ll be welcomed. 

And so it was while swimming around in this complicated soup of emotions – literally on the day I once again heard “They really enjoyed meeting you and they appreciate your experience and skills, buuuut …” – that I read Lisa Lucas’s tweets. What I loved the most was the intoxicating mix of humility and confidence. She knows she is good at her job. She also knows that we don’t always get a say in what job we get to have. 

For me, this process has been, at times, both humiliating and humbling. But somehow I remain confident — in some ways more confident — in my talents and abilities. As I said to my sister at one point “The people who think I’m amazing aren’t hiring and the people who are hiring don’t seem to think I’m amazing.” More than one of my trusted advisors, when told about yet another ding, said “They don’t know what they are missing out on.” 

So, again, in this complicated soup of humiliation coupled with a fundamental belief in my worth, Lucas’s tweets have been a balm to my soul. And I really found myself pondering this idea of knowing where you are wanted and going where you are welcomed. 

What would it look like to stop trying to prove I’m valuable and instead start looking for where I’d be welcome and wanted? I don’t know exactly what that process would involve, but what I’ve been doing the last year clearly isn’t working. It hasn’t hurt my confidence, but it has drained my energy and hasn’t been great for my finances.

It’s time to shake things up. Watch this space. 

Let me close with thanks to Ms. Lucas. What a gift she gave us this week. Living a painful moment in public cannot be easy. She did it with style and humor and taught us all something valuable in the process. I wish her a nice, long, relaxing summer.