Speaking with joy
Photo Credit: Gavin Fernandes @photaugraf
“We have it within ourselves, we have the resources within ourselves. We have to look deeply, sometimes be guided, but we have to go with our gut.”
Joy Gandell-Baily offers this advice at the end of a deep, heartbreaking, revealing conversation. Her journey from corporate HR specialist, to entrepreneur, to critical life skills coach is far from typical, and her reasons for making these uncommon life choices are compelling.
“I’ve been laid off,” Joy shares. “And I know the feeling of having the rug pulled out from under you, but I also know the horrible feeling of laying people off.”
Joy’s first career was as an HR specialist for large firms. She never loved the push-pull of the role that was at once supposed to be there to make life better for employees, but also burdened her soul every time she had to deliver news of downsizing and layoffs. Then, she was laid off, at just 31 years old and with two toddlers at home. “You feel it, as a woman, when you go on mat leave, how it totally stalls your life.” She went back to work for smaller organizations, but then decided to go it alone, and open her own HR consulting firm.
“The beginning was hard, I had to find how I was going to build this business.”
“I’m a mom, I’ve got two young kids at home but every single networking event is at 7 o’clock in the morning, and this was just not conducive to a mom’s schedule.”
“A friend of mine said if you make it 5 years you’ll see you’ve got it made, and at 4 and a half years that’s when it happened the phone didn’t stop ringing. I was busier than I ever thought I would be.” “It was great,” Joy explains. “I reached a point where I had this great balance. I was able to do everything I needed to do to help the kids with homework, take them to hockey, I answered to no one and made my own schedule. Life was utopia, or so I thought. And then at the end of 2016, in November, my daughter was diagnosed with cancer.”
Four years after that diagnosis you can still see the pain in Joy’s eyes as she relives that moment. You can still hear the crack in her voice. You can still feel her anguish, and as her story continues she shares with an intense honesty how her daughter’s battle changed her life.
“A month in I said to my husband and one of my closest friends I am never going back to HR again. I’m wasting my time. Your priorities really change when you see your daughter going through treatment for cancer,” she shares. “Life has a different meaning.”
“And I started thinking my life has to be used for a higher purpose. This is ridiculous what I’m doing.”
When her daughter’s treatment is over in 2017, Joy’s doctor insists she take a break. “I’m at home, I’m a mess, I’m crying all the time, I’m really struggling. Just getting out of bed in the morning was brutal. But the next summer I was feeling pretty good and I said ok maybe I should go back to HR now, maybe what I could do is go back and do HR for a not for profit because then I’m fulfilling a higher purpose and not lining corporate America’s pocket.”
But Joy’s life is about to take another unexpected turn. “We’re applying for high schools, and my daughter is diagnosed with ADHD, and the neuropsychologist says the biggest gift you can give to your daughter is help her with her executive functioning.”
So Joy starts to do research. She finds a coach for her daughter, who becomes a mentor for her. She starts reading, one book that leads to another book, that leads to a video, that leads to an epiphany:
“I said I know what I was meant to do for the rest of my life.”
Joy has now embarked on a new journey, one that has transformed her own life, and helped her empower others who are struggling with ADHD, executive functioning and learning disabilities. She is a critical life skills coach for the neurologically diverse community, a job that she didn't even know existed just a few years ago. “Now we’re a year and half into it, it completely changed the course of my life. I have re-tooled myself, re-educated myself and I have re-launched myself. I have clients and I am a different me,” Joy reveals. And then she shares that nugget of wisdom, the one mentioned off the top of this story, and the one that each of us can learn from Joy’s journey.
“All the answers are within ourselves,” Joy reminds us, “we just have to take the time to find them. It’s been there my whole life.”
If you or your child is struggling with ADHD and needs help with critical life skills, you can reach out to Joy at SETA Coaching.