I Left My Work Family in Providence and Flew Home With No Job, and No Title

They gave me a sendoff that felt like three things at once: a wedding, a funeral, and a family reunion.

For years, we had worked twelve to sixteen-hour days on the plant floor in Warwick, Rhode Island.

We had revitalized a struggling business, integrated an acquisition, and built something more durable than revenue, we had built trust.

The deep, earned, tested kind.

What the Team Did

They didn't just say goodbye.

They opened their homes.

Breakfast with my favourite pancakes, and sunny side up!.

Lunch in a backyard with secret family recipes shared like heirlooms.

Dinner at the local bar where the entire team showed up uninvited, spilling out of booths, loud and warm and unwilling to let the evening end.

Every moment carried the same quiet weight: you belong here too.

""I left a piece of my heart in Providence. But I brought all of me home.""

Somewhere Over New York

The flight home was where it finally broke open.

I had been storing something, I didn't know how much, for months.

Somewhere over New York, it came out.

Silent, raw, the kind of tears that is less about sadness than about the accumulated weight of a chapter that was genuinely significant.

And with it came questions I hadn't let myself ask directly while I was still in the work.

Who am I without the business card that defined me? What is my value without the title I worked so hard to earn?

The Clarity That Came Over Canada

Somewhere over the border, something settled.

Not a resolution, exactly. More of an acceptance.

The bravest thing I could do wasn't staying in the role that had defined me. It was choosing the life that actually mattered most.

I landed in Toronto with no job, no title, no plan. Just a heart full of gratitude for what had been, and a quiet conviction that starting again wasn't failure.

It was freedom.

The bravest leaders don't just lead teams. They lead themselves home.

Identity is not a title.

Leaders who build their identity entirely around professional achievement are one restructuring away from a crisis.

The ones who lead from a stable sense of self, grounded in values, in relationships, in something more durable than a role, can navigate the transitions that are inevitable in any long career.

Where are you holding on to something that has defined you, but may no longer serve you?

Courage, Integrity, and Legacy are three of the twenty traits in Half & Half.

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