My accident was May 15, 2008. At the time I was a young litigator working in-house, doing jury trials, hearings and other court appearances. I was also a newlywed. I was a pedestrian on the University of Pennsylvania campus when I was hit and pinned underneath a truck. I had serious physical injuries. I also had a traumatic brain injury, PTSD and depression. I had cognitive and speech problems. All the things that made me a good litigator were dramatically altered by the accident.
I spent a week in the ICU, then two months at home with daily care coming in and then about seven months with Bryn Mawr Rehab. I kept being told at therapy that I had a “high functioning disability.” That’s very hard to deal with because you’re smart enough to recognize there’s a problem, but you know you can’t function at the same level that you did. There was a lot of anger and “Why me?”–[all the things that go] along with a life-changing accident.
I returned to work against all my doctors’ and therapists’ recommendations. I thought some of my depression issues would be made better by getting into some sort of routine again and being back with my co-workers, even if it was just part time. But I found the opposite.
At the time I went back, I wasn’t bruised and bleeding. I didn’t have anything [obviously] physically wrong with me. People would make comments like, “I don’t understand why you have to leave early. You’re fine,” or “What do you mean you’re struggling? You can hold a conversation. I don’t see any problem.” That got frustrating because I wasn’t fine and there were a lot of things I was struggling with that people couldn’t see. It is so tough when you have a disability that is not visible.
I had been told to reconsider a career that would involve public speaking. I wasn’t allowed to go back to court. That was very frustrating and definitely made the depression worse because I felt like I was in a desk job when I’m more of a people person. I wasn’t able to go back to what I loved. I started thinking, “Is this really what I want to be doing with my life? Don’t I want to do something that makes me more happy?”
Then my mother and my husband’s mother died the same week. That was what [finally] made me leave my job. I felt like I had no plan, but I had to leave because it really set me back in terms of my mental recovery. I had a spouse with a full-time job and [I was in a position where I] could take that time to just get healthy and get myself together. I’m thankful that I could do that. I started thinking about what I could do if I couldn’t go back to court.
I started a business as a consultant and connector putting businesses and nonprofits together. At one of the first [networking] events I went to, I started talking to this gentleman. I was telling him that I never really had any plans to become an entrepreneur and really had no idea what I was doing. He said, “You should really think about joining my wife’s organization.” It turned out that his wife was, at the time, president of FemCity, [a professional women’s organization].
[FemCity] was a real turning point for me because I realized that my entire network was in the legal community and if I was going to pursue a business that was going to affect the greater community, [I needed a broader network.].
[Joining] FemCity was really important to me because it is an organization that is composed of women from every industry you can think of. [It gave me] a support system of people who were also struggling to build businesses, or who had already built businesses and had advice for me. It became a sisterhood for me as far as my professional and personal development.
FemCity also helped me find a new direction for my business. A few key people in my life said, “You’re very good at connecting people and networking. You should help other people [do that].” It hadn’t really occurred to me that that could be a business model or that it was something I could get paid for.
Ultimately, I made the decision to rebrand [as] Purposeful Networking and change the business model into helping people build their networking and marketing plans. When I started my own business, I had no idea how to network. People will tell you that everyone you talk to and every event you go to can help your business. In theory, that’s true. But in reality, people have limited resources and you have to have more of a strategy. In the beginning, I had no strategy and I saw how that impacted my business and my health. I was burned out. My goal was to teach people how to do it better so they didn’t get burned out like I did.
As I started to improve, I started to do public speaking again. The first time I talked about the accident, I completely broke down. I couldn’t get through the talk. But I think it improves every time.
One of the things I really try to do is be public about my struggles: the fact that I had mental problems, that I had to see a psychologist and a psychiatrist, and that I was not able to overcome any of it on my own. A lot of times as professionals, we feel like we have to try to fix things [and] should be smart enough to fix them on our own.
People will look at me now and think, “Her business is successful, [she’s now president of ] FemCity [and it’s] doing great and everything looks fine.” But I really did have a couple of years where it was a very dark time. And I still have struggles most people are not aware of. There’s no one answer to how you get better, but for me it involved a lot of professional help that people don’t talk about. I think it is important to be open, be yourself, and let people see behind the layers. That’s what I’ve tried to do with my story, and what I try to do as a leader and a speaker.
Written in 2019.
Images courtesy of Jennifer Lynn Robinson.