My Story: From Broken to Breakthrough

---

I didn't choose this work because I had it all figured out. I chose it because I was shattered and had to learn how to put myself back together.

There is a specific kind of exhaustion that comes from working in toxic environments. Not "I need a vacation" tired. Bone-deep, soul-crushing tired. The realization that no matter how hard you work, how much you give, or how perfectly you perform, it will never be enough for people who never intended to see your worth.

I have been the woman who cried in her car before walking into the office. Who stayed late trying to prove her value to leaders already drafting her exit plan. Who questioned whether she was "too sensitive" when the real problem was daily gaslighting. The panic attacks. The sleepless nights. That moment you look in the mirror and do not recognize the person staring back.

That was me.

If that is you right now, if you are reading this at 2 AM because you cannot sleep, or in your car during lunch because it is the only place you can breathe, I see you. You are not broken. You are not failing. You are surviving something designed to break you.

I had every credential that should have shielded me. Bachelor's in Organizational Leadership, summa cum laude. Master's in Management and Leadership, 4.0 GPA. SHRM-CP. Doctorate in Organizational Psychology in progress. More than 20 years in HR across healthcare, nonprofit, corporate, and government sectors. Million-dollar budgets. Organizational transformations. Thirty-five percent employee engagement increases. Fifteen published books.

On paper, impressive. In reality, drowning.

No credential prepares you for leaders who smile to your face and sabotage you behind closed doors. For being overworked and undervalued while less qualified people get promoted. For being told you are "not a culture fit" when what they really mean is "you make us uncomfortable by holding us accountable."

I sat in my car after another devastating performance review, one that contradicted every metric, every success, every piece of positive feedback I had received all year. Hands shaking. Chest tight. And I thought: if I stay here, I will lose myself completely.

Surviving was not enough.  And I say that as someone who knows what survival actually costs. I am a survivor of childhood abuse. I spent twenty years navigating domestic violence. I have lived through workplace bullying and institutional gaslighting that tried to rewrite my reality while I was still standing in it. By the time I reached that parking lot, I was not just professionally exhausted. I was carrying decades of harm in my body, my nervous system, and my sense of what I deserved. 

I needed to heal. And in the middle of that healing, I discovered something that reframed my entire life.

I am autistic.

Not the stereotype. Autistic the way so many women are: masked, high-achieving, exhausted, and missed for decades.

Being autistic did not cause my trauma. People did. Leaders who chose to undermine and sabotage. Colleagues who mocked what they called awkward. Systems that rewarded performance over integrity. But being autistic, undiagnosed, masking constantly, made me more vulnerable. It made recovery longer. It made the wounds deeper. It made it easier for others to dismiss me as overreacting.

Suddenly decades made sense. Why I had been called "too much" my whole life. Why I could write multiple books but found small talk excruciating. Why a last-minute schedule change could bring me to tears. Why I studied psychology obsessively, trying to decode a world everyone else seemed to navigate effortlessly.

I was not broken. I was spending enormous energy surviving environments never designed for my neurology.

That fury became fuel.

How many women are out there right now,  carrying trauma they have never been given permission to name?  Drowning in workplaces that punish them for how their brains work? Masking so hard they have forgotten who they are? Being told they are "not a culture fit" when it really means "you do not perform neurotypicality well enough?"

You are not alone in this. This community was built so you do not have to be.

That is who I built this for.

Career support should be trauma-informed, accessible and not gatekept. You cannot strategy your way out of unhealed trauma. Your nervous system remembers what your mind tries to forget, and real transformation starts with feeling safe in your own skin again.  That is true whether your trauma came from childhood, a relationship, a workplace, or everything at once. 

Every gap in your resume tells a story worth honoring. You left because staying was killing you. That is not a liability. That is leadership experience most people will never understand.

 Neurodivergence is not a deficiency to compensate for. It is a different way of moving through the world, one that workplaces have consistently failed to accommodate and that women have been punished for, often without ever knowing why. You deserve career support that was built with your neurology in mind, not designed around a neurotypical default and handed to you anyway. 

Boundaries are not selfish. They are survival tools. Your "no," without explanation or apology, is one of the most powerful tools you have.

Sustainable success is built on self-compassion, not self-punishment. Your worth is not measured by your output. You are valuable because you exist, not because you produce.

Trauma-informed and neurodivergent-affirming are not marketing terms. They are how I build everything, because I have lived it.  All of it. 

Every role I hold connects to one mission: helping people reclaim their power and building workplaces that do not break them.

• Career Coordinator & Instructor, University of Southern Indiana, serving more than 9,000 students in workforce readiness and career development.
• Director of Workforce Readiness, HR Indiana SHRM State Council, leading statewide initiatives that bridge the gap between talent and opportunity.
• Regional Volunteer Relations HR Team Member, American Red Cross, handling complex HR matters with trauma-informed, emotionally intelligent approaches across Wisconsin, Minnesota, South Dakota, and North Dakota.
• Founder and CEO, Talent Transformation Whisperer LLC, creating accessible career empowerment resources for women and HR consulting for organizations ready to build cultures where people thrive.

I will never rush your healing or judge your pace. I will tell you hard truths with compassion, not cruelty. I will build tools that hold space for the versions of you that are angry, grieving, scared, and exhausted, not just the "ready to take action" version. I will remind you that you are not too sensitive, too emotional, too much, or too broken.

You are not the problem. The system that broke you is the problem. You surviving it makes you extraordinary.

These resources exist because I remember what it felt like to need help and I could not afford it. You deserve tools that help you remember who you were before they tried to break you.

Workplaces heal when leaders choose people over productivity theater.

Megan Rose, SHRM-CP, Founder, Talent Transformation Whisperer LLC 

Virtual, Nationwide