This is the last episode of Season 1. And it felt right to close it out with a story about not having to blow up your whole life to build something new.

Tracy Buikema spent over 20 years as a massage therapist, expert enough that she went on to teach it at the college level for over a decade. But somewhere along the way, her sessions started turning into something more. Clients weren't just talking about sore shoulders. They were talking about their stress, their lives, what was keeping them stuck.

Then one client — someone she'd seen for over a decade — said something that stuck with her: "I would pay double for this session, because I feel like I got so much more out of it."

That was the moment Tracy realized coaching wasn't a departure from what she'd built. It was already happening.

So she went back to school. And found out that starting over, even when you're bringing 20-plus years of expertise with you, is still hard. "It was going from being considered an expert in my field... to then, okay, now I'm going to switch into this coaching aspect," she told me. Even when something comes naturally, learning to be a beginner again is its own kind of hard.

What I love about Tracy's story is what she didn't do. She didn't walk away from massage therapy to become a coach. She built something that holds both — coaching and somatic bodywork, together. She gets to keep what she's always loved, and expand it into something bigger.

If you're sitting with the fear that changing careers means giving up everything you've already built, I want you to hear this one.

Tracy is the owner of Heal(thy) Self Wellness LLC. She's offering a free 30-minute Transition Clarity Session — uncovering what's keeping you stuck, reconnecting with what matters most, and identifying one meaningful next step. She's also offering 20% off a first session for new clients through the end of September 2026 — just mention this podcast.

Website: healthyself-wellness.com

Text: (717) 756-4950

Instagram: @healthy_self_wellness

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tracy-buikema/

Cathy Derksen spent 25 years in medical genetics, in hospital labs and toxic environments. Twenty-five years of trusting the data over her gut.

Then, in one stretch of her life, she blew up almost everything at once: she left that 25-year career and her 23-year marriage, together, with two teenagers watching.

She'd told herself she was staying — in the marriage, in the safety of routine — for her kids. Then she saw what it was actually doing to them. That's what finally moved her.

"I describe it like throwing my life up in the air and reinventing it on the way back down," she says.

She landed in financial planning next, working with numbers and data, but now focused on helping women. A decade of commission-only paychecks in a male-dominated industry, learning as she went. It wasn't wrong. It just wasn't it.

Then, almost by accident, Cathy stumbled into multi-author books — and the scientist who'd spent decades trusting data started trusting stories instead. Today she's the founder of Inspired Tenacity, helping midlife women get published, one chapter at a time.

If you've ever wondered how someone goes from spreadsheets and lab reports to publishing other women's stories, this is that episode.

Connect with Cathy:

🌐 InspiredTenacity.com (free PDF downloads of many of her books + a Zoom accelerator session)

📧 cathy@inspiredtenacity.com

💼 LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/cathyderkseninspiredtenacity

📘 Facebook: facebook.com/cathy.derksen.3

📸 Instagram: instagram.com/inspired_tenacity

▶️ YouTube: youtube.com/@inspiredtenacitypublishing

For once, I'm the one answering the questions.

This is episode 10 of Recalculating: Your M.A.P. to Joy, and guest host Johanna Danaher flipped the mic on me to dig into my own career zigzag — the one I usually ask other people about.

I spent 20 years building an IT career. A good one, actually. Started in special education, pivoted to IT help desk because it made logical sense at the time, climbed the ladder into project management. About 18 years in, it was killing me. And not metaphorically, but actually killing me.

The moment I couldn't unsee it: ten minutes into day 2 of a go-live that was falling apart, after sending hourly updates up the entire chain of command, my boss messages me — "How's it going?" Then, immediately after: "Why didn't you do the server evaluation 6 months ago?" It wasn't even my project 6 months ago..

That was it. I couldn't do it anymore.

I talk about the fear that kept me stuck for years before that moment — the belief that you could either have a financially stable career or work you loved, but not both. I talk about getting sick for six weeks after that go-live and almost missing a dream vacation because of it. And I talk about what it actually took, financially and emotionally, to make the leap — and why it took six to eight weeks after I did before I finally felt free again.

If you're sitting in a job that pays the bills but is quietly wearing you down, this one is for you. You can have joy in your career and cash in your pocket. They don't have to be mutually exclusive. But please — don't let work kill you.

Find me at MoveToJoyCoaching.com, where you can sign up for the newsletter to hear about upcoming events and more stories like this one.

Website: movetojoycoaching.com Clarity Conversation: movetojoycoaching.com/claritycall LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/mariemclark

Susan Bianchi has run three different businesses. A restaurant. A performance and wellness practice that's worked with NFL teams and Wimbledon players. Women's workshops and open water swim retreats. On paper, none of them look alike.

Underneath, they're the same business. Human potential — helping people be all of who they can be — is the thread Susan keeps pulling, no matter what she's calling the work that year.

It didn't start that way. Susan graduated ready to climb the corporate ladder, landed in food manufacturing, and within a year knew it wasn't right. The restrictions. The glass ceiling. Watching her father tolerate a job he didn't love, year after year, and knowing she didn't want that same life decades from now.

So she jumped — first into a restaurant she co-owned for a decade, then into wellness coaching and Intrinsic Health Systems when the restaurant stopped growing her the way she needed. Each leap distilled her down closer to the core of who she actually is.

In this episode, Susan talks about the confidence it took to run a business at 25, the people who assumed a man must be in charge, and the necklace she still touches when she needs to find her way back to why she started.

If you've ever changed jobs and still felt like something was missing, this one's for you. Sometimes it's not the job that needs to change. It's getting honest about what you're actually building toward.

Connect with Susan: Website: https://www.intrinsichealthsystems.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/intrinsichealth/?hl=en Email: susan@intrinsichealthsystems.com

Learn more about Move to Joy Coaching: MoveToJoyCoaching.com

Kristy Darby spent almost twenty years in the legal field — the DA's office, private practice, and three attempts at the bar exam that never worked out. She stayed anyway, holding onto a reason bigger than the job: her brother was killed by a drunk driver when she was a baby, and prosecuting cases like his was supposed to be her way of making that mean something.

Then her body started keeping a different kind of record. Hives, all over her body. Every test came back normal. Meanwhile her mom got a third cancer diagnosis, her husband cut three fingers on a table saw, her uncle died without warning, and two of their senior dogs passed within that same short stretch of time. Her boss asked for consistency at the office. She didn't have it in her to give.

So she quit that 20 year career. Within two weeks, the hives were gone.

What came next was a year of not knowing — meditation, Reiki, a strange recurring pull toward "the spine" she couldn't explain. Then a Facebook ad for something called SpinalFlow stopped her cold: "This is exactly what I've been meant to do." She signed a three-year lease on a building before she'd even finished the training, flew to Barcelona for the immersive, and came home to open The Sacred Center of Healing, where she now helps high-achieving women get their nervous systems out of survival mode.

If you're sitting in a job that's making you sick, maybe giving you hives, and telling yourself it's just stress so you should just push through it, this episode is for you.

Connect with Kristy:

Email: kristy@thesacredcenterofhealing.com

Website: https://www.thesacredcenterofhealing.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thesacredcenterofhealingyorkpa

Kristy’s “Wake Up Rested Tomorrow” free guide: https://thesacredcenterofhealing.com/page/wake-up-rested-tomorrow

Elizabeth Mathieu graduated with an accounting degree. She spent five years at PwC, buried in Excel, working busy-season hours that ate her whole life.

She didn't quit. Not yet.

Her first pivot happened inside the same company. She moved from audit to human-centered design consulting. Same paycheck. Same office. Completely different work.

"I didn't study accounting to think I was going to end up being a life coach," she says.

Five years later, a second pivot found her. This one was scarier: leaving the corporate safety net entirely to build her own coaching and yoga business.

In this episode, Elizabeth breaks down the difference between the warm-up jump and the big leap. She also gets into what actually kept her going when people asked, "are you sure?"

Her answer: celebration. Not the big, showy kind. Small wins, noticed and named, shared with the people who'd cheer for her.

If you've got blinders on right now, if you can't quite see what's possible on the other side of your job, this conversation is for you.

Elizabeth now combines coaching with yoga in a six-month immersive program, and offers 1:1 coaching too, movement optional. Find her at http://elizabethmathieu.com and Linkedin.com/in/elizabethamathieu

Your career GPS says recalculating? That's not failure. That's your path finding you. Come find me at MoveToJoyCoaching.com.

If this episode gave you a little hope, share it with someone who needs to hear it.

Lauren Lefkowitz spent 20 years climbing the corporate ladder. HR Assistant. Accountant. VP of whatever-you-need.

Eighty to a hundred hours a week, for years.

Then her Roomba went after an unplugged lamp cord.

She ran to save the lamp, slid on her wood floor, and broke both shoulders. Recovery took almost a year. And somewhere in that year, she got the message she'd been ignoring: fine isn't fine.

Today Lauren runs eight lines of business, including her executive coaching practice, Fine Is a Trap — built for the corporate people who are tired of saying "fine" when they mean burned out, boundaryless, and busy.

In this episode, she and I talk about the fear underneath the leap (spoiler: it's not really about money), why "constructive friends" beat commiserators every time, and the line from her own coach that changed everything: "If you say so."

If you're sitting in the job that's slowly wearing you down, this one's for you.

Your GPS isn't broken. It's recalculating.

Connect with Lauren Lefkowitz: Fine Is a Trap — https://www.fineisatrap.com Free tools — https://www.fineisatrap.com/freetools LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurenlefkowitz Email — info@fineisatrap.com

Leigh Waring worked hard for her dream job. Big Four accounting firm, right out of college. The one everyone told her to want.

She got it. And something never clicked.

No dramatic blowup. No single bad day. Just a slow, quiet feeling that the work didn't have a "why" underneath it. She tried switching lanes — corporate accounting instead of public. Same feeling followed her in.

So she called her recruiter and asked a blunt question: what do people do when they don't want to do this anymore? He told her to come work at Robert Half. She researched it thoroughly (of course she did — she's an accountant) and took the leap into recruiting.

That's zigzag number one. There's a second.

Later, Leigh stepped away to run her own consulting business from home — flexible hours, more time with her kids. It looked right on paper. It wasn't. She missed her coworkers. She missed being around other adults solving problems together. So she zigzagged again, back into a corporate recruiting role, and that's where she's stayed.

In this episode, Leigh talks about the stretch of time she spent ignoring the signs, the moment she realized freedom without community wasn't the win she thought it'd be, and the one piece of advice she wishes someone had given her sooner: pay attention to what actually lights you up at work, even the small stuff. Those are the building blocks for your next move.

If you've ever felt that quiet "this isn't it" and talked yourself out of listening to it — this one's for you.

Connect with Leigh Waring on LinkedIn, or find her through Robert Half's accounting and finance recruiting team in the southeastern PA market.

Your GPS isn't broken. Come find your recalculated route at MoveToJoyCoaching.com. And be sure to like this podcast and subscribe/follow to hear more stories of people who found their career needed a new map.