The Heart-wrenching stuff...

Photo by author (not AI generated)

Last March, one the first day of spring, I ambled through one of the most challenging days of my professional life. My beloved Nacho (picture him: a chihuahua-pit bull mix) who had been my faithful 24/7 work-from-home companion + Assistant Career Coach extraordinaire for eight beautiful years, passed away after a sudden one-day-he’s-normal-and-the-next-day-he’s-not illness that left him completely blind and largely incontinent for 3 months.

Three brutal months.

Picture it: dozens of Zoom coaching sessions with high-powered executives each week, with Nacho hyperventilating (or napping) at my feet, and my eyes subtly watering—not just when clients shared truly profound experiences and insights in the session.

The day Nacho transitioned was no doubt a heartbreakingly craptastic moment, and I found myself grappling with the acute pain of loss while also preparing for a TV news appearance--the very next day.

It was a stark reminder of how life can present us with dark moments and exciting once-in-a-lifetime opportunities in the same relentless breath. Oh, Universe, I dare not curse you, but you sure know how to thrash us humans about like rag dolls on a rollercoaster…

For a few minutes I considered skipping the news show altogether, but I had been working my behind off for years—years, not months—for such an opportunity, and I decided I couldn’t squander the moment. So, I showed up…

Barely.

If you watch the news reel closely, you can spot the uncharacteristic stress zit that appeared out of nowhere on my neck. I had other things on my mind, I didn’t care, but luck just wasn’t on my side that day.

Many months later, the night before filming the very last episode of the same news series, tragedy struck again: my neighborhood sustained a devastating once-in-a-hundred-year flood. I don’t think I slept 30 minutes that night, and in the morning I had to be in NYC and camera ready once again.

I sat in the corner of a nearby cafe getting ready, holding ice cubes under my ginormous eye bags, and it kinda worked. Well, see for yourself. The smile was real, but so was the exhaustion and fear that you may not have noticed had you been watching the news that day.

This is why I never let a smile deceive me on social media. Plenty of my new clients arrive at my proverbial doorstep, their LinkedIn profiles picture-perfect, but their work lives (and personal lives) in shambles, or just not in a great place.

If you’ve ever had an “IRL” conversation with me, you know there’s more to that iceberg than meets the eye, but let’s leave those stories for another day (I’m an open book, so feel free to say hello and ask anything you wish to ask).