From CIA Spy to Fitness Instructor to Writer
How I found and embraced my “unicorn space”
When I worked at the CIA, I was one of the lucky few who could say that my vocation was my avocation. I was an expert on Africa and a Swahili linguist, and I lived and breathed it. What I did for work and who I was as a person were so intertwined that when I left the CIA, I went through an unexpected grieving period and identity crisis.
To make matters even more difficult, I had moved to the Pacific Northwest, a far cry from Washington, D.C. where you’re hard-pressed to find someone who isn’t familiar with intelligence agencies. In the PNW, people didn’t ask what you did for a living let alone what you used to do. They wanted to know what you liked to do in your free time. Free time? What’s that? I had always been so focused on my career that I didn’t make any time for interests outside of it.
I distinctly remember asking myself, “Is my husband the most interesting thing about me?” After all, Ryan, also a former CIA officer, was the most fascinating person I knew. He spoke multiple languages, played several instruments, and cooked Julia Child’s recipes. He excelled at seemingly everything he did.
Much of Ryan’s interests stemmed from his time working as an operations officer at the CIA. To be successful in his role, you need to be able to make connections and build trust with your operational contacts. The best way to do this is over shared interests, and it helps when you have several interests yourself. When I talk about this ability to find common ground, I refer to it as “You Me, Same Same,” and I often discuss it in the context of making ourselves — and our children — well-rounded in an effort to build connections with others.
I realized that what I needed during this period of my life was a sense of connection with other mothers.
Now, after reading Eve Rodsky’s book, Find Your Unicorn Space: Reclaim Your Creative Life in a Too-Busy World, I have a new perspective on it. I’ve realized that Ryan has been mastering the art of embracing his Unicorn Space for years. Why hadn’t I?
Eve Rodsky defines “Unicorn Space” as “the active and open pursuit of self-expression in any form, which requires value-based curiosity and purposeful sharing of this pursuit with the world.”
When I expressed my concern to my husband that I didn’t have any of my own interests, he promptly responded with a list of interests that were all his, not mine.
“But they could be yours, too,” he said.
“No, I need to find my own,” I told him.
Thankfully, as someone who embraces his own Unicorn Space and has already lived through a failed marriage before ours, Ryan was fully on board with my exploration. That led me to a period of exploring new interests to find what made me, well, me. (Eve calls this “Identifying a Curiosity,” and it’s the first of her “Three C’s of Creativity.”)
However, just when I started to find my footing in my post-CIA life, we decided to have a baby. I enthusiastically embraced my role as a mother to my three school-aged stepchildren and newborn. But before long, I began to feel like it wasn’t enough. As much as I wanted this life and chose it (and am so incredibly privileged to have this choice), I couldn’t help but feel like I had lost myself again. Who was I apart from a mother?
A midnight Google search while nursing led me to a local fitness group for mothers, which ignited a spark of creativity in me I didn’t know existed. I had never been athletic — I used to feign headaches in P.E. so I could spend the class in the nurse’s office, rather than at a game of kickball.
Soon, I realized that what I needed during this period of my life was a sense of connection with other mothers. We all needed to see other people who could relate to the changes our bodies — and our lives — had just undergone. And much to my surprise, I found that I enjoyed the fitness aspect of it, too. In fact, I enjoyed it so much that I became an instructor and later opened a fitness company of my own.
When I began to carve out this time for myself to connect with others and learn about myself, I found that I had more energy to explore other areas of creativity. That’s translated directly to writing. I spent my CIA career writing intelligence assessments for the President and other policymakers. Now, I had an opportunity to write more creatively. And I relished it.
Deciding to write was easy (well, maybe not easy, because it took me a while to get to this point), but once I did, it made perfect sense. It energized me. And the idea of publishing a book energized me even more. However, I learned quickly that this isn’t an easy path. After two years of rejections, I finally landed a literary agent, and a few months later, my first book deal.
Ryan and I came up with the idea together and pitched publishers in New York as a duo. But when our favorite imprint came back and said they wanted the book only if I wrote it in my voice, Ryan was my biggest supporter. He knew this was my dream, my Unicorn Space. And when that book was published a year and a half later during the pandemic, I promoted it virtually through interviews and podcasts. I told Ryan that it was the most I had felt like myself since I had left the CIA.
As Rodsky would agree, it felt like breathing.
In Find Your Unicorn Space, Rodsky tells us it’s not too late to explore our curiosities and find what sparks our creativity. That doesn’t mean it will be easy to carve out time or even decide what it is we want to do. Hell, it may even be scary. But Rodsky’s step-by-step process makes it all feel much more attainable.
After finally accomplishing our goal, we are encouraged to celebrate and then reimagine a whole new dream.
“We get to be more than our roles,” Rodsky says. “More than one thing. We get to define ourselves in any number of ways.”
How will you reclaim your right to be interesting? What feels as natural as breathing to you?
Christina Hillsberg is a former CIA intelligence officer, writer, and mom. She is the author of License to Parent: How my Career as a Spy Helped Me Raise Resourceful, Self-Sufficient Kids.
