How did Hallie Become an Organizational Healer?
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I’ve been stepping into my destiny my whole life, but I’ve been blocked many times along the way…
The first time I was blocked was when I was a baby. My parents did the very best they could when I was growing up, and we’ve done a great deal of healing and communicating in adulthood to cultivate our love and respect for each other. My parents have been my greatest teachers in this lifetime. My mom worked as a seamstress and my dad worked as a wastewater treatment plant operator (he now owns his own international business as an independent contractor — probably where I get my entrepreneurial spirit from) in the town of Pine River, MN. We got by, but we didn’t have a lot of money. Not enough for a playpen. So while my mom sewed, she put me in a box next to her to try and keep me safe. I learned from a very young age how to be alone (one of my now superpowers), but it does make me feel claustrophobic in crowds and on planes.
When I was five we moved into our first home in the Backus township (even more rural — 250 people) in the woods. The trees became my first real friends. Consoling me outside when my parents were arguing inside. I learned that my house wasn’t a safe place to be. I was afraid.
When I was in 3rd grade, I started to grow into my body. Which produces odor when unwashed. My mom is a little bit of a free thinker and didn’t believe in deodorant, so I went to school a little smelly sometimes and some kids would bully me for it. I felt deep shame about my body.
Some girls continued to bully me from 3rd grade through 7th grade, so I felt pretty socially isolated. Again, more alone time for introspection and processing body language and human behavior. So I turned to books for comfort (thanks to my grandmother). And my cat. I love cats. I’ve learned so much from them. You have to earn their respect. We operate in a similar way as humans.
When I was in 7th grade, my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. I was afraid she would die. She didn’t.
The rape happened at 17, which you know already if you’ve been following along on LinkedIn. It was my first boyfriend. My first sexual experience. It was confusing. I was scared I was pregnant. I woke my mom up in the middle of the night to talk about it, and she told me I couldn’t have plan B unless I went to the gynecologist (a natural request to be made), but I didn’t want anyone invading my body, and I didn’t know at the time that it was rape. I felt deeply uncomfortable and afraid in my body after that. Living with near constant fear and anxiety.
This all happened around the time college applications were due. I couldn’t think straight even though I was a straight-A student. I applied to Harvard University and got an interview, but didn’t get in. I didn’t get into my dream school University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill either. The only place I got in was University of Minnesota. Thank god, because it was where I was meant to be. I think I would have really struggled being farther away from home.
I desperately wanted to feel loved. I discovered alcohol and started drinking really heavily on the weekends to numb my suffering. But it only dimmed my spirit.
I was studying global studies — I was passionate about the idea of helping people. I wanted to try something outside my comfort zone and I was learning to speak French. So I applied to a study abroad program in Senegal. I moved there for the academic year to study at the West African Research Center. I was sick for the first 3 months (my dad almost got on a plane to come bring me home), but I was determined to stick it out. Something told me there was much learning to be done there. I ended up moving to a rural community of Keur Samba Gueye to teach English alongside an amazing Senegalese teacher, Mama Sarr, and my host family — particularly Modou Sow. I learned much from them about patience and compassion.
I moved home to MN and felt entirely lost. I was a different person changed forever, but I felt unseen. I graduated a semester early in 2011 having completed college-level courses online my senior year of high school to save money on tuition (they offered college credit to high school students for free which was awesome).
So it was winter 2011, and I fell into a deep depression. Not leaving my studio apartment except to go to work at the mall to sell clothing. Which I hated. Too much materialism in this world that destroys our humanity. When I wasn’t working, I was not bathing. Not eating. For nearly a month. My mom drove down to the cities to help me clean up my apartment and find some semblance of motivation to find a job. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I knew I wanted to help people. I had enjoyed teaching in Senegal, but I didn’t want to do that full time. I felt lost.
Eventually I found a job in San Francisco working for Free the Children. A problematic organization anchored in white-saviorism, but I didn’t know that at the time. I just wanted to help people. I got a job as an outreach speaker where I had the opportunity to share my learnings and information about the organization with over 16,000 youth across California. My favorite part of the job was facilitating international youth volunteer trips where I led groups of 15–20 middle/high school students in leadership development work through community service. I traveled to Nicaragua, India, and Ghana to facilitate these experiences for young people and I loved it. It lit my soul on fire.
I stepped into my first management position there and was power hungry. I wanted control. I micromanaged. I don’t think I had the real respect of my team, but I wanted it desperately.
After 3 years, the company culture was toxic. Everyone was working all hours of the day and night for very little pay, and our little office in California (it was a Canadian organization) started a little revolt. They shut our office down… but not long before I landed myself a different job at NerdWallet. I banked the severance.
NerdWallet was my dream tech company. Fancy office. Free lunch. Open bar. Ping pong. The works. I was so incredibly excited and proud to have landed that job, but it only lasted a few years…
Because they terminated our department. Shoot. I was back at square 1, but I had a little severance to tide me over. I didn’t have much savings. I was afraid I was going to have to move home. Which didn’t really feel like an option.
But the universe made it happen for me. I landed a job at brightwheel working for a leader I really admire. It was a small, scrappy team back then and I had the opportunity to build systems and processes, but really missed leading a team.
Enter Glassdoor. They reached out and offered me a job leading a team of 7 people and I jumped at that learning opportunity. Working in groups meant I could learn more about systems of power and authority. Something I was curious about. I didn’t particularly enjoy the customer success stuff, but man, I loved the people. Managing people is really hard. You want to let them be who they are, but they also sometimes need to do things differently. I wasn’t a great communicator back then. I avoided conflict. I was more concerned with being liked than being a good leader, so I just swept bad behavior under the rug and let problematic stuff go unaddressed. What you tolerate is what will persist when it comes to group dynamics.
Around this time, I met a friend who introduced me to therapy. I had known for awhile that something “felt off.” I would isolate myself and drink a lot. Treating my body disrespectfully. So I went to therapy. My first session, I sat down on the couch and started talking. I couldn’t get two words out before I just began to cry hysterically. Several sessions went by in that fashion. I didn’t speak. I just cried. I felt shame while I sat there. I had never let myself cry in front of people before. Because when I was little, I would get yelled at if I cried.
A few months after therapy started, I went on a trip to Tulum, Mexico. It was there that I started having flashbacks of being raped. I had buried that trauma so deep within me that my brain didn’t trust my body to know that it was rape. My brain was catching up with my body. And it was sooooo emotionally painful. It wasn’t until I returned from Tulum and was back on the couch in front of my therapist that I spoke the words aloud for the first time. I was raped.
That triggered all kinds of PTSD. My body went into fits of paralysis. I would dissociate. People would talk to me and I couldn’t hear them. I couldn’t process information. I would cry randomly. And I was afraid. The fear was working its way through my system. I knew I needed to confront it head on if I had any hope of survival. So I did.
One day, I published a Facebook post telling my story. Remember the town I’m from is small. So people could figure out who it was. I knew he would read it. We were still friends on Facebook at the time. Within 24 hours, he messaged me and tried to intimidate me. And I wrote the words: “I don’t have to justify my story to you or anyone else for it to be true.” That felt good. A reclamation of my power.
So I started going to therapy more regularly during that time — like twice a week to work this trauma through. All this time, I was working at Glassdoor. So I made that Facebook post and felt all kinds of paranoia. People at work could potentially have found out. Now that I had asserted my voice, I wanted to make sure I controlled my own narrative. I took that Monday off work. Called in sick. But I went into work on Tuesday. That morning we had our weekly customer success leadership meeting — nearly 20 people were there. I shared, “over the weekend, I confronted the man who raped me when I was 17.” I was hysterical. I was embarrassed. But I couldn’t let this shame of being raped hold me back anymore. I needed to be my authentic self in order to move forward with my life. My boss at the time turned to me and asked, “would you like to go collect yourself outside?” That made me angry. Why did I have to leave? I was having a super hard time and I had to be the one to leave? No way. So I said “no thanks, I’d just like to do my job.” And the meeting continued after one compassionate colleague acknowledged my suffering. Imagine that. I shared one of my deepest darkest truths. I could tell it made people feel uncomfortable. Rape isn’t something we talk about that often, but man, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen often.
Men are in positions of authority at work. Just because they’re in positions of authority doesn’t make them anymore powerful. That said, they do have the ability to violate our bodies without our permission and that’s scary as hell. That’s why we as women sometimes make ourselves smaller. More people pleasing. Placing the needs of men above our own. Because we’re afraid they’ll kill us.
But I was done making myself smaller to make men feel more comfortable. I was doing the hard work and confronting my pain and anger and suffering and they just needed to deal with it.
I was activating my personal power. And folks were scared. I imagine in their minds I was a victim. Someone to be “saved.” They put me on a mandatory leave of absence (against my will). Extricating me from the workplace. Making me feel like some sort of problem. I’m completely capable of doing my job. I was doing a great job this whole time. I was even up for a promotion off cycle. A rarity for the company.
So I was mad. I wanted to file a lawsuit. But my wise therapist helped me realize that maybe this was a gift. Some paid time off to relax. So I did. Sort of. I continued processing the PTSD out of my system and ate lots of good food and went on lots of long walks and all kinds of nice things. But after 3 weeks, I was ready to get back into the office. I was bored.
They wouldn’t let me come back. They said they were “figuring things out.” What things? It was my job. I was no less capable than I had been before. I just shared what was going on in my “personal” life.
Here’s what else I’ve learned: there is no such thing as “personal” or “professional.” That’s just a construct men in positions of power have created as a mechanism for avoiding their feelings.
So 4 weeks was up, and I went back to work. But people weren’t treating me the same anymore. No one would laugh with me anymore. I loved having fun at work. I believe joy is our inherent right. People (not all of them) wouldn’t look me in the eye. I felt entirely disrespected.
I had been invited to speak at the office in Chicago for one of our team gatherings about what I loved about Glassdoor. So I got up on stage and recited one of my favorite quotes from Maya Angelou: “You are only free when you realize you belong no place — you belong every place — no place at all. The risk is high, the reward is great.” I felt so raw saying those words on stage and I was a little emotional. I expressed my gratitude to my team for supporting me as I took a leave of absence and that is what I loved about Glassdoor. The people.
I then went on a pre-scheduled vacation which had been planned for over a year. A leaf peeping tour with my Great Aunt Scooter, my dad, my aunt, and uncle on the east coast. It was amazing! I was dreaming about starting my own business. Going to grad school. I attended a masters class at Harvard Business School to try that on for size while on that trip.
When I returned from that trip, I was called into a Zoom meeting room one day and was told by HR (not even by my boss at the time) that “my presence in the office was triggering for others and that I would never be successful there.” What the hell? So because I was a human, I was triggering. How is that my fault? I’m just over here being who I am. If that makes you uncomfortable, that’s not my problem. That’s your problem.
They only offered me 1 month’s severance. I negotiated for 3 plus benefits coverage. And I left. I felt liberated. I didn’t want to be in a place where people didn’t want me there.
But, again, I was scared of running out of money and having to move back home. I was really loving life in San Francisco in my lovely 1 bedroom apartment which I paid for all by myself. My dad did end up helping me out financially a little later because I was running out of money… but I was proud of the life I was building. Even though it was painful.
So the PTSD was running rampant and it triggered a manic episode (oh right, I forgot to mention that earlier… I was diagnosed bipolar while working at Glassdoor).
Anyway. I wanted to do more of the leadership stuff. That felt good. But I didn’t like being the one in the foreground. It just took too much of my energy. I wanted to be in a more supportive role. So I took courses at the Co-Active Training Institute to become a certified coach. I didn’t finish the courses because after two sessions, I realized. I can do this. I don’t need the certification. I needed to save money because I still didn’t have a job.
Enter Covid. The world was shutting down, I was running out of money, and I needed a job. Enter NexHealth.
It was a job in customer success (not my favorite), but it would pay the bills while I built my business. I started volunteering my services to practice with health workers who were having a really rough time. I was holding space for people. For their suffering. And it felt really good. As they processed their trauma and grief, I felt a sense of healing within myself. We were doing the work together. It made me feel less alone.
I decided I wanted to learn more so I applied to Teachers College, Columbia University and was accepted. So I moved to NYC in 2021 where I worked remotely and went to school (I’m still in the program now and am slated to graduate spring 2024).
I am grateful to Alamin Uddin for enabling me to move into a people operations role while at NexHealth. Now I was really starting to soar. I was building company culture. Creating a community of belonging where people could do great work they could feel proud of. NexHealth has an amazing vision to change the world and accelerate innovation in healthcare. We need that solution for such a broken system that causes so much pain and suffering for people.
But I was getting met with so much resistance. An all-male leadership team and me. I was advocating for belonging, diversity, equity, and inclusion. I was advocating for it for myself because the company is only 20% female-identifying. I don’t think they liked that very much. I think they believe that HR is a process-oriented function only. But it’s not. It’s a people-oriented function. And what people need is psychological safety. A sense that they can do the work they need to get done. That they can take risks without fear of ridicule. But there was ridicule there. So much ridicule causing so much suffering. I believe I could have facilitated healing if they had given me the chance to work it through, but again, I was fired in October 2022 for being who I am.
By this point, I’ve stock-piled some cash though and I got some severance. I’m fully prepared to usher in the new era of workplace experience. I have the chops. I’ve done the work. I’m learning as I go, but I can’t work for another toxic workplace. I just don’t have the energy for it. My energy is reserved for those workplaces who want to improve the experience for their employees. That’s my destiny.
I’m here on this earth to usher in more compassion. That’s my purpose. I’m here to teach people about feelings. How to process them. How to use them to create cool stuff at work. How to use them to navigate conflict and build relationships. We’re all recovering from an intense period of isolation, but we’re not alone. We have each other. And we’re amazing. We have so many skills and ideas and joy and love to offer this world. And the world needs it. To begin the healing process. We need to reconnect with the divine feminine energy and bring more of that to the workplace which has been historically masculine. We need both to survive. We need more compassion right now…
We need to practice patience and humility. That’s how we learn. and most of all, we need to take ownership over the impact we have as humans on other people. It’s our responsibility. We choose every action we take.
So January rolls around and I fall into a really really deep depression. Probably the darkest one since that time after graduating college. I’m suicidal. I’m sitting on the floor of my room holding the stockpile of all my meds ready to take them. And then something in me said, I’m not done yet.
My therapist recommended ketamine therapy. So I signed up at Nushama. I had my last treatment on Friday last week.
While on this psychedelic journey, I felt so disgusting and afraid. I was the scum on the bottom of someone’s shoe. And then I melted down into the sewer. It was gross, and I was scared, but then I had this quiet inkling to follow the fear down with the sludge. So I did.
As the ketamine worked its way through my system, so did the trauma of being raped at 17. Now, I’m figuring if you’ve read this far, your mind is probably exploding right now. This is like a journal entry. This type of content isn’t supposed to live here! But who says?
The truth is, this trauma lives in my body. I am a person. I don’t stop being a person at work. There was no escaping the near-constant fear and anxiety I’ve felt nearly all my life while in the presence of men. And I’m done running from it. I’m not a victim. I have inherent worth and value and am worthy of dignity just like everybody else. Especially in the workplace.
I’ve been disrespected multiple times at work by men (not by every man, to be clear — many men have treated me with dignity). I like to believe it was never their intention, but I can’t be sure.
So I’m in the chair at Nushama in NYC, and I’m hysterical. I’m heaving and sobbing and wailing with emotional pain (and the somatic experience of the violence that was done to my body). And in walks Eric — a white man. And instantly I’m afraid. As I was crying and trying to catch my breath he handed me a tissue — a kind gesture.
That really pissed me off, so I said “thank you, but I don’t need that.” He said, “I’m just trying to comfort you.” So I said, “no, you’re trying to comfort you. When you hand me a tissue, it makes me feel like I’m a problem to be solved. And I’m not a problem. I’m a person.”
Damn. It felt good to say those words and raise my voice. I’d never stood up to a man quite like that before…
Historically, my authentic voice would get lost somewhere at the base of my throat where my rapist had strangled me, and I would instead say “thank you.” (Eric is an amazingly skilled therapist, by the way, and I’m so grateful to him for his care, patience, and compassion as he shepherded me through this most recent cycle of grieving — which I’ve processed many times over in my weekly therapy sessions for the past several years.)
So the moral of the story is this: Each of us is capable of brave things. Hard things. Scary things. And no one can take your power away, but yourself. Just because you have a boss, doesn’t mean they’re any more important or valuable than you. We are all worthy of dignity in the workplace no matter our rank, file, gender, race, creed or any other identifier. We need more humanity in the workplace, and I’m paving the way. Join me. I need your help. I’m sharing my mental health journey on LinkedIn — please follow me there for live updates!
#leadershipdevelopment #culture #imhumaneverywhereigo #compassionrevolution
