Most of us were trained to leave work at work, as if a great wall stood between the therapy room and the rest of our lives. When I sat down with business coach Jenny Melrose for the first episode of Face Value, my card game interview series on The Vicarious Trauma and Resilience Podcast, I heard a different story. Over 16 years of building businesses, many of them alongside therapists, Jenny has learned to become herself inside her work and outside of it. The cards kept turning up a person learning to show up whole in every room she walks into.
This week on the blog I’m sharing my top takeaways and reflections from my time with Jenny Melrose.
Watch the full conversation
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What does it mean to take up space in your own business?
Taking up space means showing up in your work without apologizing for being there, and letting that same steadiness follow you home.
Jenny's first card asked what she has stopped apologizing for. Her answer started in a grocery store in her twenties, newborn in tow, saying "I'm sorry" to every stranger she needed to pass. Her husband pointed out that she never needed to apologize for taking up space. "Excuse me" replaced "I'm sorry," and the change followed her into her business, from setting business hours to answering refund requests with curiosity instead of apology. In her words, it "comes from a place of strength rather than minimizing who you are."
I've been practicing my own version for about a year. Instead of opening a late email with "I'm so sorry for the delay," I write "Thank you for your patience." The email starts with gratitude instead of shame, and I start the next thing a little more like myself.
Can you be yourself and a therapist at the same time?
Yes. Who you are at work and who you are everywhere else can grow into one self, and that makes you more present in both places.
Jenny spent nine years teaching in an inner-city school district in New York before a food blog, started as a hobby during new motherhood, became her full-time business. When bloggers started filling her inbox with questions after her conference talks, she didn't leave the teacher behind. "I'm a teacher," she told herself. "I'm going to teach." Her first course came out of that decision, and so did the coaching business she runs today.
She was candid that the integration is still in progress. She still ties "a lot of self-worth to the growth of the business," and a slow month feels personal at first. What steadies her is looking at the data over time and coming back to her reason for doing this work.
Listening to her, I thought about the moment I stopped being Jenny over here and a therapist over there, and became Jenny and a therapist. When that finally clicked, I felt more present and grounded than I ever had while keeping the two apart.
Why can't therapists just leave work at work?
The work lives in our bodies and relationships, so a hard wall rarely holds. A deliberate way to move between roles, with support, holds better.
Jenny has worked out every morning for about ten years, in the window between waking up and getting her middle schooler out the door. When I asked what keeps women from doing the same, she named scheduling and boundaries, and then the people who make it possible. When her daughters were little, her husband made sure they knew that when the music was playing, that time was hers. "First you have to give yourself that space," she said, and then you bring your partner along.
That's the difference between a wall and a transition. A wall asks you to stop being one person and instantly become another. A transition gives you a few minutes, a ritual, and sometimes a person who protects that time, so you can arrive in the next part of your day as yourself. We cannot do this work alone, and that includes the work of moving through it.
Can energy from one part of your life renew another?
What restores you outside of work can carry back into your work, and the reverse is true too. Energy travels when you stop walling it off.
When a card asked what she's gotten weirdly into lately, Jenny lit up talking about television. After a lifetime of loving TV, she binges everything from Grey's Anatomy to Emily in Paris, partly because it keeps her off social media and partly because, as she put it, she just wants to go into "a fictional place." My husband and I have been doing the same with Ted Lasso, which lets us vicariously experience feelings we don't always have words for.
The back of that card asked when she last had that kind of energy at work. Her answer came fast. It happens every time she starts planning something new, like the in-person retreat she's hosting in December. The joy she finds in one space shows up in the other. For trauma therapists, that's part of how vicarious resilience works. The energy you build in your life outside of session comes with you into the room, and what you witness in your clients' growth can renew you on the way back out.
Holding the hope
Our last card asked for a piece of advice Jenny received young that turned out to be right. Hers was to look forward and smile, because the hard things behind us are part of what made us. It reminded me of what so many of us tell clients at their most hopeless: I can hold the hope for you until you're ready to hold it yourself. We need people who hold it for us, too.
When I flipped the card and asked how she passes this on as a leader, she described clients who tell her, "I heard your voice and knew it was what I needed to do." She held the hope long enough for them to carry it themselves, which is what becoming human inside your work makes possible for the people you serve.
If you're ready to stop expecting yourself to leave it all at the office, start with Soft Transitions, a free 3 to 5 minute worksheet for moving from client work back into the rest of your life as yourself.
About Jenny Melrose
Jenny Melrose is a business coach who has spent 16 years helping online entrepreneurs, especially therapists, build businesses beyond the therapy room. After losing a large social media following when Google+ shut down, she built her approach around assets you own: a website that speaks to the people you serve, an email list, and your own products and services. She runs group coaching programs, online summits, and an in-person retreat, and hosts a long-running podcast for therapist entrepreneurs.
Website: jennymelrose.com
Podcast: The Practice to Profit Podcast
Socials: Here
