LESSON ONE

I Am Enough

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How can I be so smart and be in something so stupid?

Working as a senior executive at an international breast cancer charity, I was at the top of my professional game. Blessed with the rare opportunity to do what I loved while also making a difference, I was fiercely committed to the mission and incredibly proud of our life-changing work. Life wasn't perfect, but it was pretty darn sweet.

That is, until a fateful January day when what should have been a private discourse over funding erupted into a very public and heated debate with another women's nonprofit. It was an absolute spectacle fueled by nonstop media coverage and confusion. Within twenty-four hours, we went from being one of the world's most beloved charities to being engulfed by a raging wildfire, one we had absolutely no idea how to extinguish or control.

Every day, our offices around the country were besieged with thousands of angry calls and e-mails from donors who weren't happy with our decisions. Our national office was routinely under the threat of protest, and one day someone even took a shot at our building. Yep! You read it right: a gunshot. As you can imagine, when building security told us they were considering putting bulletproof film on the windows, "job security" took on a whole new meaning.

It was a catastrophe of the worst proportions — personally and professionally — especially for those of us trying to put out the flames. Stressed doesn't even begin to describe our state. For weeks on end, it was an all-day all-hands-on-deck fight. Regularly we'd spend twelve to fourteen hours each day at the office being attacked over the phone and e-mail, only to go home and find the same thing happening on our personal social media pages. It was exhausting and incredibly frustrating. Worse still was that while we worked hard to put out the fire, I personally began to suffocate from the smoke.

As news coverage of our crisis began including references to hidden agendas and covert agreements, my stress level went through the roof. And my internal angst started manifesting in some pretty severe outward symptoms. In the middle of meetings, my chest would suddenly tighten and my face would start tingling. My lips would go numb, and no matter how much I massaged, I couldn't make it go away. After a while, it started happening at night too, along with uncontrollable jerking as I slept.

Initially, I chalked it up to elevated blood pressure. Given the extreme circumstances, it seemed a reasonable conclusion. I assumed things would go back to normal when the crisis had passed. But there were moments — actually a lot of moments — when I wondered if I were having a heart attack and a stroke at the same time.

After weeks of nonstop mania, I finally gave in to my son's pleas and went to see the doctor.