When Personal Experiences Shape Our Professional Selves

Written by guest author Jessica Gutierrez, founder of Calm-hearted.

Taking a career break, leaving a leadership position, or changing professional direction often comes with an expectation that you should have a tidy explanation.

Why did you leave? What changed? So, what's next?!

These are understandable questions, especially in hiring conversations, but sometimes these reasons are deeply personal. How much of your story should you have to share to have your professional choices understood?

Our careers don’t exist separately from our personal lives. Grief, illness, caregiving, and other significant changes can influence our priorities and the support we need at work, but they shouldn’t automatically affect how our professional value is perceived.

For women in particular, changes in personal circumstances often lead to assumptions about commitment and capabilities. Research on the motherhood penalty has shown how becoming a mother can lead others to question a woman's competence, even when her qualifications haven't changed. Mothered Media's 2026 research challenges the idea that working mothers become less ambitious, highlighting instead that they become more selective and discerning about what they need from work. Recognizing this distinction matters for employers: changing priorities don't necessarily mean diminished commitment, and how workplaces respond can influence whether talented women stay and thrive.

When our personal lives change our professional priorities

Content note: The following references baby loss.

I've spent more than a decade building my career in learning strategy, program development, and communications. I've taken great pride in my work, the teams I've supported, and the contributions I've made.

Earlier this year, my premature newborn son died shortly after birth. Instead of being on maternity leave with my son, I returned to my leadership role eight weeks after his death, hoping that putting my energy into work might offer some sense of normalcy through my grief. I still wanted to contribute, apply my experience, and continue growing professionally.

But a sustainable return depended on more than my willingness; it also depended on how my workplace responded to what I was going through. Despite good intentions, my experience returning to work made an already difficult time harder. After five weeks, I decided to leave the company. I believe that with a different approach, I could have continued contributing in a role I still cared about.

When life changes, workplace support needs to respond

My experience is one example of how profound loss can reshape the professional decisions we make and what we need from an employer. I appreciate this perspective from another bereaved parent, and its reminder to leaders that “the employee who returned is not the same employee who left.”

After a significant life experience, an employee can return with the same skills, but different needs. Responsibilities that once felt manageable may now require additional flexibility or a different kind of support.

Rather than making assumptions, leaders should have ongoing conversations about what someone needs and adjust accordingly. A supportive response might include revisiting priorities, workload, or timelines, rather than expecting everything to resume exactly as before.

Understanding shouldn’t require full disclosure

Even in supportive workplaces, deciding how much of our personal experiences to share can be complicated. We can encourage authenticity at work, but it shouldn't require more vulnerability than someone is comfortable with.

From my lived experience and pregnancy and infant loss advocacy, I've written about building bereavement-ready workplaces: how to put the systems in place before a tragedy occurs, and how to respond with practical support after it does.

With a psychologically safe culture, employees can make decisions about how to best communicate their story and needs. They should be able to discuss taking time away, seeking flexibility, or reconsidering their professional priorities without feeling they must justify their personal story — or worry that their capabilities will be called into question if they choose to share any part of it.

Recognizing the person behind the career path

Employers and hiring managers have an important role in staying curious about career paths that aren't always linear. Rather than asking candidates to account for every step of their career journey, employers can focus on what they bring to the role, what they're interested in pursuing, and how their experience aligns with the opportunity.

A study on employment gaps and hiring discrimination found that resumés highlighting years of experience rather than employment dates received approximately 15% more callbacks than those showing employment gaps. The findings challenge us to ask whether we're evaluating qualifications or making assumptions about the path someone has taken.

Not every career decision comes with a tidy explanation, and they shouldn't have to. The more we acknowledge and talk about how our personal experiences shape our professional selves, the more we normalize career paths that evolve over the course of our lives and recognize the role that workplaces play in how people navigate those changes.

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Calm-hearted is a pregnancy and infant loss platform offering relatable writing, practical support, remembrance, and workplace guidance after loss. Check out their website here for more information.