There’s another reason Osborn, 37, wasn’t crushed to give up her six-figure salary.
For years, she’d been feeling as if she should be doing something else.
“It sounds silly, but I knew I was supposed to fulfill a mission.
Only I didn’t know what that was,” she says.
“My ambition was to find out what I was meant to do with my life.”
After all, until fairly recently, men have overwhelmingly been the bread winners.
The reality is, there’s no guarantee that your job will exist tomorrow.
We talked to three who ditched conventional definitions of success and ended up exhilarated.
Because isn’t that what all of us ultimately deserve?
Like many young women, Holly Frew stumbled into her first job after college somewhat randomly.
“The money was great, but the work wasn’t challenging,” she says.
Frew was also uneasy with the corporate culture: “In sales, it’s all about the money.
After a while, that felt pretty empty to me.”
That was in 2005.
“It changed my life,” she says.
It was deeply moving."
When Frew got back to the States, she fell into a mini-funk.
“Climbing the corporate ladder seemed so pointless after what I’d seen,” she says.
So when she heard about another yearlong program in Swaziland, she seriously considered applying.
“At first, I was scared to leave my job,” she says.
If there’s a time to do this, it’s now."
Instead, she took jobs as a barista and a nanny while researching careers in international medical relief.
“I knew I needed something full-time.”
When she saw a listing for a PR and marketing spot, she applied.
“It was just what I was looking for,” Frew says.
Now, two years later, she enthuses, “I love it.
“I’d performed in high school and college but never considered making a career of it.
Suddenly, it occurred to me that I could have a go at be a singer for real.”
A few months later, Osborn received her first-ever payment for a gig.
“It was only $40, but it was the most precious $40 I’d ever earned.
It felt amazing that someone would pay me to sing!”
“He is totally behind me and is happy that I’m happy,” she says.
“My life feels so much richer than before.
Being a mom wasn’t the only thing I wanted,” she says.
As a systems analyst for a big corporation, she savored the intellectual challenges of the job.
“It was a struggle for me to care about work,” she says.
“Nothing was as important to me as being with my kids,” Maddern says.
“We had to redefine our wants versus our needs,” she says.
“That was tough to do, but whenever I got frustrated, I’d look at my children.
Once I held my babies, my definition of fulfillment changed drastically.”
Photo Credit: Embry Rucker
