Leaving a job…

They say that people do not leave jobs, they leave people. Unethical, harmful, toxic people would be my guess. After 17 months as a Clinical Director at a residential program in my home state, I left a group of people. It is amazing to me as I look back, how much effort I put into fighting to remain there…Along with a small group of supportive women who struggled with the same organization for its lack of organizational clarity, failure to consistently follow any sort of ethical trajectory, and often followed a cry of “this is what we have always done” as the organization was showing signs of floundering from the time I arrived. There are so many words I could use to describe this place and most of the people who worked there but that’s not where I want my energy to go this morning. I wasn’t fired; I was “transitioned early” than my letter of resignation given on 3/31/2025 to my supervisor. I had given the organization a more-than-sufficient deadline which outlined the changes that needed to occur for me to be able to stay; July 1st. I guess those changes were too much for the organization to consider. I also announced my thoughts about the changes that I believed needed to occur in a larger meeting with top leadership. This top leadership who has been taken over by a local HR management company, a company BTW that lost all of my respect the first time I met them. Why I thought for one minute past that first meeting that I could stay is beyond me. My intuition was working behind the scene as it guided me toward the “early transition” standoff on April 15th. The pathetic CEO who sat silently during the meeting – that’s an image I will hold on to so that if, in the future I get a whiff of such a similar entity, I will know what to do. Three days later, as I write this, with my entirely new life before me, returning to a place of shelter, I do not have any fears I will run into such a person again – at least one that controls my professional life. I am unshackled from those chains and will move forward into the professional life of my dreams and forever remember the lessons learned over the past 17 months and incorporate them, not as prison sentences but as warnings for the future.