Navigate a river of career and life possibilities

I'm thrilled to share my conversation with Bridget Thoreson, journalist and creator of MyCareerRiver.com, "for professionals who realize that a linear, slow-and-steady approach to career growth is now the riskiest path you can take."

Bridget and I spoke about resilience, transitions of many kinds, and navigating life and career as LGBTQ+ people. I left our conversation feeling hopeful and inspired. I'm excited to share Bridget's expert insights with you!

Please subscribe to the Explore Your Career River newsletter for more caring, focused guidance on navigating your next career transition:

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed.

Rey: You share a lot of great advice for people navigating career transitions. Your insights feel relevant to transitions in general, whether it’s a relationship transition, a gender transition, or a big move.

I love that you said that practice helps: If you navigate one scary transition successfully, you’ll be better equipped to succeed with another.

What kind of skills or practice do you think help people become more resilient and avoid burnout? 

Bridget: One thing that is really beneficial when it comes to practicing transitions is to make your own milestones. When we look at career transitions or any of these other big transitions, often we think about it in terms of a movie montage.

We all want to get to that big moment where we can say, I have done the thing, I am Rocky at the top of the stairs. But in reality, most of our lives are spent doing that montage, which is not always fun. It’s not always clear what it’s for or whether you’re doing it right or whether it will lead anywhere.

So when you make your own milestones, you take back the power of what that big moment is. 

Often the big moment can mean external acknowledgement. In terms of careers, you can get a job you’re excited about, which is external, not totally within your control. There’s a lot of things that you do along the way to that big moment that you can celebrate as your successes.

It helps to chop it up into smaller pieces because an accomplishment can take a lot of time and effort and energy, and it’s easy to feel like you’re not going anywhere.

I’ll give you an example. I am working on a book proposal, and anybody in the publishing industry will tell you that is an exercise in rejection, right? So, I made a posterboard in my office that says “rejections are feedback.” Every time I get no response or a rejection or an invitation for more information, I post it up on that board. 

This way, I’m reframing. This is not, look at what a failure I am. I have all these rejections, I haven’t gotten anywhere yet, but I tried something. Look at all this wonderful effort. Who knows where it will lead. It will be great to have that big moment when the book is on shelves. But in the meantime, the thing that can keep you going is acknowledging that you’re trying, and that you don’t necessarily know whether it will lead to that big moment, but you’re doing what you can to get there.

Rey: I love that you acknowledge that most of your life is the montage of getting there. For publishing a book, everyone sees when you have the launch party and book signings. But it’s usually not visible that the author is doing a ton of research and working on it for years in most cases.

For people working on their career or working on a gender transition, there’s usually so much thought that goes into it behind the scenes, but then it comes out as this surprise. I think celebrating and acknowledging the work that goes into it is really powerful.

Bridget: You can’t get there without all that work. This has been a lesson I’ve had to learn in my own work because I came from daily journalism - I turned around a story in a day. A book is a much longer process, but I can tell the work is better because I am trying to hone it and sharpen it and respond to the feedback I’m getting. I want to put out my best effort. Nothing’s ever perfect, but I want to be really proud of what I’ve dedicated that time to. Slicing it up into mini milestones is a helpful way to get there.

Rey: I love your essay, The Unlikely Rebel, in which you share that coming out as gay has helped you learn to navigate the career world as well. You say showing up authentically is the best way to find the people and places that fit you best.

How has coming out helped you understand your career journey? And do you have any advice for people who may feel anxious about coming out?

Bridget: First of all, do what feels right and safe for you.

What I have found about coming out is that I recognized that my marriage and my family were something I had to build in a system that was not built to serve us. This was pre-Obergefell. We got married in 2009. We flew halfway across the country so we could have a wedding license that was legally meaningless in our home state, but it meant something to us to have the words “wedding license” on a piece of paper.

When you’re approaching your life, whether it’s your work or your family life, authenticity is the difference between flowing with the current and paddling against the current, to use the river analogy. You’re following your internal compass. 

I've had moments where I was not able to be my authentic self, and it was really hard. I was banned from LGBTQ+ coverage in my newsroom because I was gay, in the name of “objectivity.”

While the newsroom TV screens were showing the Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme court ruling, my co-workers were coming by my desk to congratulate me, and I was sitting there feeling happy for myself and my wife, and what this meant for our lives, but also this very deep sadness that I could not bring my perspective to my work. I knew there were stories that were not being told. As much as my lovely co-workers were congratulating me, they didn’t understand because they didn’t know what they didn’t know.

That was a real lesson to me in finding places that will value your perspective and your authentic work, and in having the confidence and courage to seek out places that really want your authentic self.

I recognize this is not always possible in every situation, but when you’re looking for a job and you have the capacity to be kind of choosy, I’m actually looking for a good fit. After every interview, I’ll ask myself, do I feel like I presented my unique value?

And by the way, if they say no, great - I’ve saved a lot of time and energy not contorting myself to be someone I’m not. I’ve done those jobs where I’m like, I can be this person, but then it’s like, oh no, I have to be that person every day, and that’s not who I authentically want to be. 

Even though it can feel really hard, bringing your authentic self to the conversation ultimately is about giving yourself permission to discover what’s possible. 

When you get that negative response as unfortunately we all will, that tells me more about them than it does about my value. I know my value, I just need to find the people and places that want what I bring.

Rey: Thank you for sharing your story. I can’t get over that they didn’t allow you to write about gay marriage as a journalist. They allow straight journalists to write about straight marriage all the time, for example.

Bridget: When I had my first child, I was the only mom in the newsroom who could not contribute to the Mommy Talk column. 

Rey: This is an example of you not being able to contribute valuable information from your authentic self that a lot of people would love to read. That’s frustrating.

Bridget: Frustrating, but it’s also unfortunately reality. I think sometimes resilience can be used to pressure people into pushing against something that’s not going to budge very far. Sometimes resilience means investing in yourself, so you can do more and go farther. That can mean leaving and finding places that are a better fit. 

Rey: That’s a really important distinction between pushing yourself in a way that’s unhealthy, or doing what someone else is telling you to do, versus having resilience in developing your best self, whatever that might be.

Bridget: We see this all the time with burnout. It’s really interesting to think about burnout as this gap between your expectations for your work and the reality of your work. And then, so often, the burden is put on the individual to solve it. But when it’s a systemic problem, sometimes your best choice is to leave the system. 

This can be incredibly isolating, though. The power and value of community cannot be overstated. On My Career River, I talk a lot about tributaries, this idea that people connect with your journey, whether it’s for a moment or for years. Collectively, we wear down barriers. Think of the Grand Canyon worn down by the Colorado River. It takes collective effort and time. 

The idea of working together and finding the people who will help you push forward is absolutely essential. So much of these stories people don’t share, whether it’s the montage, the struggle, or the failures and disappointments. Just knowing that someone else has faced a similar challenge to yours, and learning how they have done something to try to move forward, can give you that energy you need to push forward as well. 

I cannot overstate the importance of connection, honesty, authenticity, and talking about challenges because that's the only way that we can really overcome them.

Rey: I agree that community is really important, and that is something I’m trying to build with my work as well, to have people feel like they have empathetic support from people who understand what they’re going through. I think it’s been really powerful.

Bridget, what brings you hope in these uncertain times?

Bridget: What gives me the most hope is recognizing that any moment we’re in is not permanent.

This is something my daughter actually brought home to me in a moment that sparked the whole Career River idea. I was feeling hopeless, several years ago during the beginning of the Covid pandemic. I was crying on my kitchen floor, as one does. I was struggling in a few different areas of my life. I was trying to homeschool my two young kids during the lockdown, while working full time, which was not a recipe for success. 

My company was changing direction, and my job was changing into a position I was no longer interested in. I felt stuck without a clear next step for me to take in my career. I felt like a failure as a professional and as a parent.

As I was crying on my floor, my four-year-old daughter walked into the kitchen and saw me. She told me, very seriously, “Mommy, you have too many feelings.”

Then, she told me to put my feelings somewhere, and so I asked her, “Where should I put my feelings?”

She said, “In the future.”

This made me stop and think about what small step could I take so I’m no longer feeling this way in the future. What would that look like? Because I could see no clear next step, I got curious and reached out and talked to people. This is what really made the Career River spark to life for me.

When I was explaining my career path to journalism students, I would ask them to picture a river delta, with many different branches you can follow in the same ecosystem. It’s exploration, this idea that I can take small actions today to work towards my future, even if I’m crying on the kitchen floor. This helps take me out of the moment I’m in so I can see what’s possible.

One of my children was born by emergent C-section, unscheduled, as a preemie, which was very scary. I was sitting in the operating room before they got started. Whoever designed that hospital gown, I just want to thank them for shifting my perspective. The gown was covered with pictures and words of birthdays, holidays, picnics, and all the things I could look forward to with this child I was about to have. 

However scared and powerless I felt in that moment that this really frightening thing was about to happen, it wouldn’t last forever, and it was for a purpose, and there would be more to come. 

So what gives me hope is that however difficult things feel, there is a future you can work towards. You can find your way there. You don’t have to know all the answers. You can find the people who will help you discover your way forward. 

Rey: I love that. This is really comforting and helpful to hear the stories about how you got through these difficult situations and what you learned. Thank you so much for sharing, Bridget! 

Bridget: It's been lovely to connect with you. Thanks again!

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What's helped you navigate transitions in your life? Let us know in the comments!