Leaving Law, Finding Self: A Healing Journey Beyond the Profession - 2

In this episode, I continue the story I began in Episode One about my decision to walk away from the practice of law. While I loved supporting my clients and colleagues, I eventually realized that the kind of help I was giving no longer lit me up. The more I looked around at people I admired—my coach, my healer, my mentors—the more I knew I was being called to something different.

I share the messy middle of my transition: moving from partner to in-house counsel, pushing back my “exit date” again and again, and finally reaching the point where the universe made it clear there was no turning back. From building financial stability to stepping fully into entrepreneurship, I talk openly about the resilience it takes to reinvent yourself—and the discomfort that comes when you bump into old versions of yourself who remind you of the life you left behind.

This conversation is for anyone who feels the nudge that something in their career isn’t aligned. I hope my story inspires you to listen to that whisper, to explore what’s possible, and to remember that even when the leap feels terrifying, it’s often the path that leads us closer to our most authentic lives.

#CareerPivot #LifeAfterLaw #Resilience #Entrepreneurship #WomenInLaw

Welcome to Lady(ish)—the podcast where real talk meets whole-self transformation. Hosted by coach, healer, and wellness guide Autumn Noble O’Hanlon, this unfiltered space is for women who want more out of life—but on their own terms.

Each week, we dive into the messy, beautiful, and often contradictory layers of wellness, covering everything from career shifts and body image to energy healing, intuitive living, fitness, burnout recovery, and creating change that actually sticks.

Whether you're chasing a new chapter, healing old wounds, or just trying to reconnect with yourself in a loud, overwhelming world—Lady(ish) is here to support your evolution. Expect honest conversations, coaching wisdom, holistic tools, spiritual insights, and permission to be a little bit of everything (and nothing you're not).

Because wellness isn’t one-size-fits-all—and neither are you.

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Autumn@theuncomfortabledream.com

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Transcript

Autumn G Noble (00:00)

Continuing on with the story that I started in the first episode, it's not that I didn't enjoy practicing law, it's just that I knew something was missing. I really enjoyed helping people and I truly believe that I was helping people. My client contacts, the HR teams and the staff, I felt like I helped them every day and made their lives easier by providing good, timely and efficient work.

and being a good partner to them. But over time, I started to realize that I wasn't that connected with the substance of the work. I started to feel like my area of expertise just didn't really matter and didn't really move the needle in the way that I wanted to. And furthermore, the help that I was offering to my client contacts, while it was help, yes, it wasn't exactly the kind of help that I wanted to give. It wasn't the kind of service.

that lit me up. And while I enjoyed helping them and it provided happiness to a certain extent, over time, I just became really disconnected with the type of help and service that I was offering and I wanted to give something more. When I looked around at the people in my life that I really admired, people whose lives I looked at and I thought, I wanna be like that or I wanna do something like that, I looked to my

life and career coach and I looked to my spiritual advisor and healer and really believed in the work that they were doing and saw how it was changing people's lives and my life included.

That was when I knew that I needed to start looking beyond the practice of law. And once I opened myself up to that possibility, it was almost like every time I showed up at work, my skin would almost crawl. I just couldn't stand to do it anymore once I realized that I was called to do something else. Eventually, an opportunity presented itself to me and allowed me to shift to a more manageable legal career.

Going from being a shareholder in a law firm and running a practice group, I transitioned to being associate general counsel at a Fortune 300 company. And while there was certainly a workload to carry, it differed in a lot of ways from working as outside counsel. I felt like I had more evenings and free time available, handing off items to the in-house team and waiting for feedback and responses. While, yes, I spent a lot of time in meetings,

that frustrated me and often felt like a waste of time. I had the mental and emotional capacity at the end of every day to devote to starting this new path to creating a coaching business, to developing my skills in those areas so that I could give the type of support and service that I had really truly been longing to give.

I always say to my coaching clients that when you're wanting something at some point in life, you either have to take the leap or life will throw you off of the cliff and essentially make the leap for you. I had set an exit date many times over the course of my tenure working in house. And I moved that date back a few months, six months, a year, largely because I wanted to make sure that I had my finances in order before I was able to make the leap.

I paid off debts, paid off my student loans, got everything in order, built up a sizable savings account, small investment accounts that I could pull from in case of emergency. I had everything in order. And even as my new exit date approached, I wasn't ready to make the leap. And I felt myself pushing it back once again. Fast forward just a few months, it came to light that one of the business units that was my primary area of support

was being spun off from the company. And while it was presented to me that I could just learn a new area of law and a new product line within the company, my heart wasn't in it. And I was not willing or interested at that stage of my career to pivot away from my expertise and start fresh. That's when I knew that it was time for me to take the leap that the universe had stood up and said, no more. We are doing this thing.

And so I gave my notice and I walked away. That was just a few years ago and I have been building my businesses and finding a new path in this entrepreneurship realm, continuing to develop my skills and grow the services that I offer. I wish I could say that it was as successful out of the gate as I wanted it to be, but I would be certainly lying to you.

I often tell women in similar positions that being an entrepreneur is really like just failing over and over and over again and waking up every day just feeling like you're constantly digging out, solving problems, failing, making mistakes and pushing forward. It's less an exercise in success and more an exercise in resilience.

Today I was at my gym coaching a client through a fitness exercise and I saw one of my former partners wandering around the gym, casting me sideways glances, trying to figure out if I was the person that he remembered from just six or seven years ago. It was a very uncomfortable experience for me and I had this moment of questioning myself, why do I feel uncomfortable? Why is this making me feel so strange?

Why do I have this inclination to feel embarrassed about where I am in my life? And I realized and reminded myself that when you pivot away from practicing law, you're not only changing your sense of self, you're changing the way that people look at you and think of you. There's some sort of power and strength and notoriety and respect that comes with simply calling yourself.

a member of the bar. Choosing to walk away from something like that really forces you to come face to face with who you are at your core as a human being and what it means to be who you are without the title. This was certainly not the first time I've had this type of an encounter, but it was one that really struck me because I'm finally in the space where I'm really loving what I do and the well-rounded services that I offer and I'm seeing how I'm helping people.

day in and day out in a meaningful and powerful way. And in that height of happiness, I'm looking over and seeing a reflection of that past self that I left behind. And it calls into doubt and question all of the choices that I've made. As I'm sure he was wondering, what the hell is she doing with a personal trainer shirt on coaching these people in the middle of the afternoon? I have wondered that myself many, many times over.

When you decide to pivot away from whatever it is that you're doing, you have to change the way you envision yourself. It's creating a whole new identity and being able to stand up and hold that identity up in the face of scrutiny from people from your past, from people around you, from people that just don't get it. And that, my friend, is an exercise in resilience.

Regardless of whether or not anyone's entrepreneurial journeys or career pivots works out the way that they want it to I promise you it is never in vain the type of strength and resilience and self recreation and design that you go through on this type of a journey will force you to face some of the darkest and most questionable sides of yourself letting go of having a steady income and a safety net and prestige and respect from those around you

And trading that in for people to look at you and question you and gossip about the decisions that you've made is calling you to rise up and stand up in your truth and find a backbone and a strength in a way that I don't think I've ever been challenged to find. So that's a really long way of saying everything that we go through, I think, leads us to the place that we are meant to be.

And if you feel that nudge, and I know I've said this before, but if there's something in you that's wanting more, that feels like something just isn't right, I would encourage you to explore ways to make space for that in your life, because it is worth it. And it's often a sign that in some way, and to some extent, we are living out of alignment with our true and authentic selves. And that, my friends, I think is a very sad.

way to squander your time on this planet.