When independence unlocks another level
A lawyer dares to reinvent herself with a unexpected mid-career move [The Other Side of Enough: Final Interview]
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The Way of Work explores stories of where we fit in the world of work. This is part of the series, The Other Side of Enough, exploring what life is like when you have enough to never work again. The last one has the most likes: Should you put off life for the future?
This one is personal to me.
Over the course of this series, I’ve spoken with people who have grappled with life after achieving "enough" — artists, writers, founders, bankers, and more.
Today, the story hits closer to home: it’s about my mom.
When I left the corporate world a year and a half ago, I thought I was going to start a <insert big-and-important-venture>. I had a lot of support — especially from my network, who said I was perfectly positioned to make this kind of move. But the logical, linear path up ahead for me didn’t feel right (check out my Don’t Work series to learn more).
Many of us have our parents to thank for so many regrets in life — directly or indirectly steering us toward paths we may not have chosen for ourselves. But during my own reinvention, it was my parents who inspired me to think beyond the bubble of my expectations. This is my mom’s story…
—
After 26 years as a lawyer, Cathy Foerster made one of the most unconventional career shifts I’ve ever seen: she became a pastor. While her legal career brought success and recognition, she felt like there was something more for her. But her eventual change would even surprise herself.
“My friends thought I was crazy. They would look at me a little weird like… ‘okay?’”
This is not a sales pitch to take a religious path, but instead, a story of daring to do something different. It’s a story of finding a calling at any stage in life, even in unexpected places. And it’s about who we can become when money is no longer the primary driver.
I hope her story inspires you to reconsider what's possible, as it did for me.
Choosing Ambition Over Tradition
“Part of my story is the tension of working women.”
While my mom ultimately built a career as a lawyer, the path she took to get there was anything but straightforward.
“I was not brought up to think of having a career. I was brought up thinking, well, you could be a school teacher. You could be something else. But you'll probably be a mom.
Nobody was giving me career counseling. Nobody was saying, ‘you've got to work someday.’ Schools, at that point, didn't at least with women.
I really had not thought about what I wanted to do.”
Without clear direction, she took one of the first opportunities that came her way: becoming a paralegal because in high school she babysat for a lawyer and cleaned his office. It was an unglamorous start, but working there gave her a front-row seat to the inner workings of a legal profession, and the clear divide between those with power and those without it.
“Women were in the workforce, but a lot of it was secretarial, low-level stuff. The secretaries typed and the lawyers didn't. So which side of that divide did you want to be on?”
She began to see her potential in a new light, beyond the expectations that were in front of her.
“It didn't take me too long to realize that I was as smart as the lawyers.
[And] I have to be responsible for my own life, instead of waiting to marry somebody.”
The Quiet Search for Something More
Over several decades, Cathy built a career in law that challenged her intellect, created deep relationships with her clients, and brought her the satisfaction of solving complex problems collaboratively. Yet beneath her professional success, she began to wonder if there was something else out there for her.
“I had a tension between being a mom and work. So I would start thinking about maybe I should do something different. But I always came back to, well, I can't even think of something that's different from what I have now.
I had the same problem I had at the front end of my career. I didn't really know what the choices were.”
This dilemma is one many of us know well: our situation feels fine – not bad, but not special. And yet, we struggle to see the alternatives, much less connect the dots between where we are and where we might want to be. So we keep-on-going with the current thing, our questions left unresolved.
For Cathy, a decision to change didn’t happen overnight – in fact, it was a slow unraveling that took 26 years.
“I just felt like there was something in me that needed to do something different. But I didn't know what it was.”
Years later, a major turning point came when my father’s company sold, putting them on the other side of “enough.” For Cathy, she knew this position was an enormous privilege, and offered her a unique opportunity.
“Money was off the table as an issue. So I felt like I was off the hook.
It gave me the ability to walk away from one thing, before I knew what the next thing was.”
Stumbling into a Calling
Uncertain about “what’s next,” she sought guidance from a friend who counseled people transitioning to second careers. Cathy took several tests to assess her strengths and potential new paths. The list included a curve-ball:
“One is being a lawyer, and that's what I was trying to not be.
The second one was being a professor.
The third one was to get into not-for-profit work.
The fourth one was to be a minister. And I said, well, that's off the table.”
This was the first sign that she should become a pastor, but she rejected the idea immediately. It was such a divergent path from being a lawyer and she didn’t want to go back to school. Plus:
“I was religious, but not that religious.”
Searching for a fresh start, but without a clear direction where to go, Cathy made a bold decision to quit law without any defined next steps:
“I'm gonna take a year off. I'm gonna take a year where I'm just gonna put this question down for now. I'm going to give myself a year of permission to see what bubbles up.”
Months passed, and Cathy found herself still searching for a meaningful way to fill her time. Then on a random visit to her church, she received her second sign to become a pastor:
“I'm sitting there standing out in the [lobby] of the church, and along the staircase there was a bulletin board. I'm standing out there waiting, and it gets long. So I'm reading the stuff on the bulletin board… and in the corner is this flyer that the presbytery was putting on these [Bible study] courses.
I looked down the list of courses, and 8 of 10 of them were interesting to me.”
But the sign-up date had passed, so she dismissed the sign again.
A few weeks later, Cathy remembered the flyer and decided to call. The course was starting in a few days, but she could join if she read half the textbook in the 2 days before the first class. When she showed up, Cathy had no idea what she had walked into.
“I go into the course and I have no clue. What is this course about? I didn't know what it was. I just thought it was a Bible study.
But it's filled with people who want to become a pastor.”
What Cathy didn’t realize was that she had enrolled in a program to become a Commissioned Lay Pastor (a path to becoming a pastor without going to seminary). Despite the surprise, she stuck with it, and soon realized she had found what she was looking for.
“I loved it… I mean I really loved it. It was so interesting to me.
It was all of these pieces that I had were coming together and fitting together, and it just seemed to be right. I just landed where I needed to be.
That's how I sort of fell into what felt like the perfect job.”
Unexpected Connections
“I didn't fit anybody's mold of a pastor.”
You may be wondering how someone like a lawyer becomes a pastor. The two seem worlds apart. I mean, lawyers are supposed to be cutthroat, impersonal, and willing to bend the truth to win (not my mom of course, but you know, in general…).
We often find ways to fit ourselves into specific containers based on our traits, background, or what others expect. We’re told “You belong there, or there, but definitely not there!” Unfortunately, these containers become prisons, and we lock ourselves out of other potential futures based on some underlying belief.
Cathy found, however, despite the obvious surface-level differences between the careers, the two were more connected than they seemed – a realization that she only discovered in retrospect.
“You look back and you can just see all of the threads that came together. And it turned out that being a lawyer was a good background. It very clearly helped me. I could see the overlap between what I've learned and what I was doing.”
As a lawyer, Cathy had learned how to bring different people together, navigate complex issues, and resolve conflicts. She knew how to communicate abstract concepts. She understood how to manage a business and assist with financial matters. And her reputation as a serious professional gave her instant credibility in every room she walked into.
All these things added up to a skillset that was unique as a pastor, but extremely useful.
“I tell people it's very satisfying. To take the accumulation of skills and put them into a different use.”
What if, we too, removed the blinders that narrow our prospects to only certain directions? What if we were to apply our skills in new, unexpected ways?
Some of it may be giving ourselves space to let the world come to us. Some of it may be about following our curiosity. And some of it may be about resisting our knee-jerk “nos” to unusual opportunities.
“I feel really blessed. I ended up doing two things, both of which were the right thing at the right time. Part of that's not going down paths that don't have any meaning to them.
[I’ve also reflected] how often the strands that worked out for me, were always places where I ended up being pushed and pulled into something I didn't want to do. If I followed my own inclination and didn't allow people to drag me into new areas, I wouldn't have ever gotten there.
When there's an opportunity, don't say ‘no’ so fast. Try something that pushes you out of your comfort zone. Then you look back, and you're like, well, that wasn't so hard.”
Meaning in the Mess
Toward the end of our conversation, my mom reflected on the deeper significance of her work as a pastor: how it made her feel, what it meant to her, and what it meant to others.
“I felt like I was contributing way more to people than I did as a lawyer.
People go to lawyers to get answers. And they think they go to pastors to get answers. But what they really want is presence. And you have to learn not to jump in with answers. In fact, there are no answers.”
How often do we miss meaning by chasing clear, easy opportunities, while distancing ourselves from ones laced with uncertainty?
“[As a pastor,] you were talking to people at stress points in their lives. You're talking to them when people are dying, when they're getting married, when they're having new kids, when they're dealing with problems.
When they're just trying to make sense of life – how to make sense of the world and God.”
We also seem altogether too focused on the idea of happiness. We ask: “What will make me happy?” But “happy” ends up being the wrong word to pursue, leading us off track from where the real substance of life can be found. My mom, who could have been doing anything else (or nothing at all), found that real meaning can be found in places where “happy” is a scarce resource.
“You learn pretty quickly how messy people’s lives are.
You and I and our family, we have got a good life. But a lot of people don't. Even people that look like they have it together. They've got a lot of hurt and messiness in their lives. And it comes out to the pastor.”
She recalled counseling a dying woman – a mother whose son had committed suicide. The woman blamed herself, wondering if she had pushed him too hard.
“So you sit down and you just process that with them. You can't answer it. You can't resolve this, but you can journey with them.”
Changing Others, by Changing Ourselves
“I found that when people said that something I did made a difference in their lives… I mean, that was huge.”
I’ll end on one more story: in one sermon, my mom held up three cups—a china cup, a mug, and a styrofoam cup—while pouring coffee into each. Her point was that it’s not the vessel that matters, but what’s inside.
“The coffee is the coffee.”
Later that week, she gets a call to meet with a member of the congregation…
“And I get there, and she starts telling me her son, who was in high school, came home so excited after my sermon about the coffee.
And he essentially came out to his parents… he told his parents he was gay. He felt like he could explain it through this thing, this [analogy of the coffee].
And she said, ‘part of the reason I'm telling you is I thought you should know that what you were doing was making a big difference in people's lives.’
There were times where that happened. Where people would say, what you said that day, or how you responded that day, made a difference.
You know, that's very fulfilling.”
Of course, I love this whole story because it’s my mom. But also because she dared to become someone different. Rather than chasing more prestige, money, or success, she looked beyond the linear script she was supposed to follow, to a new path she never planned for.
To me, this is the real power of reaching “enough” (whether material or psychological). It’s the ability to push our boundaries further. To explore new worlds previously unaccessible. And even unlock another level of who we are and what we can do in this life.
And so, my mom’s story is a fitting conclusion to this series, asking us:
Is there something more out there for us?
What kind of life is waiting for us on the other side of enough?
This interview was transcribed, then summarized and edited for clarity; any emphasis is mine.1
Bonus Questions
What has been your best purchase, since hitting enough?
Upgrading our cottage to [be livable] year-round house so we have a great place to live in retirement.
Being able to make a greater impact with our charitable contributions.
Before & After - on a scale of 1-10 (10 being best), how would you rate the following before and after enough:
Health: 6 → 8 (+20%)2
Stress (10 is low stress): 3 → 8 (+50%)3
Creativity: 5 → 9 (+40%)
Relationships: 6 → 8 (+20%)
Impact: 6 → 9 (+30%)
Meaning: 5 → 9 (+40%)
Work Hours/Week: 55 → 27.5 (-50%)4
This is part of the series, The Other Side of Enough, exploring what life is like when you have enough to never work again. Next week will be some broader reflections & lessons learned from the series. Some other articles from the series you might like:
Waiting Decades to Finally Follow Your Dreams
I recommend interviewing your parents someday because it's an odd/interesting/deep experience…
"Health had to do more with having kids and then having cancer, more than my work."
"Both positions came with high stress. The big difference is that stress as a lawyer was chronic, while stress as pastor was more situational."
As a lawyer, she eventually went part-time to 40 hours. As a pastor, this is an average over a year, but it was very seasonal.
You have a wonderful and intelligent mom. Her career change is dramatic and inspirational. She must have influenced you in a lot of things including making your own career switch.
Is she one of your readers? Hope to see her comment on her own story.