06/26/25: Conversationality with special guest Elizabeth Bohannon

Yeah, we'll get on the phone.

Hi, everyone. You're watching Conversationality, a bi weekly show brought to you by Optionality, your community exploring the now of work. Hi, it's Dori Desjardins, co founder of Optionality. Elisa Camelhort, my co founder, is in the wings. But also here with me and with us both today is our guest, someone we've been wanting to talk to for quite some time, Elizabeth Bohannon. She's a friend, she's a coach, she's an inspiration, and she was so gracious to agree to join us today. Welcome, Elizabeth.

Thank you, Jori. It is an absolute delight and pleasure to share this space with you.

So I want to share why we asked Elizabeth to join us today. So many of you in the community know that this month we've been talking about contingencies and plans A, B and C, which is something that we talk about a lot at Optionality. But when Elisa and I were thinking about, what did we want to focus on? We don't actually get our agenda from on high. We talk about what we're dealing with in the moment, and then that becomes part of the agenda. And I know for me personally, and Elisa, too, I suppose we've been. Things have come up. Okay. Things that we never planned. And I always envisioned myself as a very effective, adaptable person, and I always thought of myself. It's funny, Elizabeth, you had a great post yesterday about pivoting. I can talk about pivots all day long, but sometimes it's not a pivot. It's more than that. It's like dynamite has been brought into your life and blown. Blown stuff up.

Yeah.

And then what? And we wanted to talk about that because there are many in our community and ourselves, illness, job loss, relationship loss, deaths of some sort that are not about pivots. They are about blowing up your world and how do you adapt to those? And while I was adjusting to my new circumstances, and what I love to do is have plans A, B, C, D. I just work the plan. Work the plan. But there was no working a plan. There was no plan.

Yeah.

And what do you do in those circumstances? How do you react? And I found that I was having conversations with friends in this sort of middle, Middle Earth state where I'm kind of like, in between stuff, not even knowing what to say to my friends and my community. And I was just finding things that were sources of inspiration during this period, one of which was a post you had written, Elizabeth, that just blew my mind. It blew my mind because it was about how do you even move forward when you just don't know? You just don't know. You just have to continue. And you had you made a distinction between hope, which is something that I love to do. I hope for a lot of things. I hope for that client, I hope for that revenue. I hope for more members. I hope for a lot of things. And faith, which is a much different, subtle, but different concept, which is about having a deep source of. I suppose I won't say certainty, but at least a deep sense that something will. Will happen that is supposed to happen, whatever that looks like, but what will be, will be. And it was so profound for me that I knew. I know who we need to bring on Elisa. We need to talk to Elizabeth. We need her here. And that is why we asked you to join us. Although you could have joined us many times in our conversations because you've had so much wisdom that you've shared with your community over just ever since you've had your. Your substack, which I've been reading pretty religiously, I get my little Elizabeth snacks with your. With your substack with me. So all of that is to say I should probably explain, I should probably share a little bit more about you, Elizabeth, and then let's, let's dig in. So we met when I was at a retreat for a women's group that we both belonged to. You were a newer member. So I had just met you, and at the time I knew you had been at Airbnb and you had been at many companies in tech. You were a general counsel. You were, you were the. There's a lot of lawyers in this community. So I'm like, oh, another lawyer in tech. Oh, that's great. What I didn't know is that you were sick and you were recovering from. You were being treated for a pretty profound illness. I mean, life threatening, incurable, chronic. And I never would have known that because you were just this font of positivity and light. And I remember thinking, this woman has no problems, no problems in the world, until I learned that about you. And I just was fascinated, continuing to, to follow your newsletter, how you have given us this gift of sharing your journey along the way when you didn't know how things would turn out. And it so happens that the, the newsletter that I read that was so profoundly helpful to me was one that you wrote when you learned you were in remission. And so anyway, this. There's so much wisdom here that I think you could share. You're a coach now. You talk to people all the time about their careers. And you see people in crisis mode, and yet you really understand what crisis mode is and perspective in crisis mode.

Yeah, deeply. Deeply. And it's not like Jory before my diagnosis, which, for folks who don't know is multiple myeloma. It's a cancer of the plasma cells inside the bone marrow, and at present, we don't have a cure for it. And before that, it wasn't like I didn't have crises. You know, I had two children. I had issues with my kids, issues with my. My mother, all. You know, I had them. I had them just like you have them, and probably everybody listening has them. But there's something very different about that moment when you get that diagnosis and the world just stops. You know, it just. It just stops. And suddenly, in a blink of an eye, you have no earthly idea how to move forward or who you are or who to call or any of it. You know, it's just, oh, my God. And that's all you got. And so it's a really profound experience. Anybody who's experienced a diagnosis or a family member who's had a serious diagnosis knows this feeling. It's like all of a sudden, the bottom has dropped out. You're hanging there, and you have no idea where you're going to land. And. And so that's how it all started for me. And I will say that first year was a year of terror. I mean, I didn't go straight to brilliant metaphors. I just. I just was scared all the time. Couldn't sleep, couldn't figure out a way through. Didn't know how to talk to people about it, because I couldn't even articulate how scared I was. And at some point in that fear, I realized, okay, this is not sustainable because this isn't living. This isn't me. I don't know who I am, but I don't want to live like this. And that's when I started doing the work, really the work of. Okay, what are you so afraid of? Well, duh, death. I'm afraid of dying. All right, let's go there. Let's go there. And amazing how there's this moment when you face the thing you're most afraid of, how possibilities start to open up. People came into my life. My friend John, who. Who I met on this fundraising hike in Alaska after my stem cell transplant. He had metastatic colon cancer. 48 years old. You know, vibrant life, making films and living in the wilderness and scaling mountains and doing all this crazy adventure stuff and he opened up and talked to me about this concept of vitality. And he knew with absolute certainty that when his vitality ran out, he was done. And that was so helpful to me. It was like, okay, what is it for me that is most important? And I attached myself to this idea of vitality. It's not quite like John's, because Lord knows I wasn't going up mountains like a mountain goat like he was. But I understood that I wanted to live a life of flourishing. I wanted to live a life where no matter what was happening, I could connect, I could communicate. I could be with my horse and my dog and continue to work with my clients. Like, all those things that gave me meaning is how I formed this new mindset. And it wasn't about hope, because, honestly, I have an incurable disease. Hope is like a battering ram. You know, every time you hope for a remission and you don't get one, you're back to the bottom again. And that was exhausting. So at the time I first wrote that essay that you read was way back when I was about to go through a stem cell transplant. And I had been so beaten up by this disease and so disappointed, I had an oncologist who said, I really hate meeting with you, Elizabeth, because I feel like it's always just bad news.

Yeah.

And so it was at that time when I really questioned the concept of hope and how passive it is. Like, it's sort of like, oh, please, can I be rescued? And. And I started forming this opinion that there was something else. There was something about getting your ass out of bed in the morning and making that coffee and taking that walk and looking at the red shouldered hawk that lives in the tree next to my house and doing those things that ground you. That's where the faith comes from. So if I put one foot in front of the other foot, I will take steps. Those steps will lead to a walk, and that walk might lead somewhere.

There's something, I think if you had to describe it, it's about being present.

Yeah. Not being pulled into the fear. And that's what I think is so universal about my experience, is that we all know what it feels like to be sucked into this fear state. It's fear of being fired. It's fear of being humiliated. It's fear of being mocked or not being enough or not seeming smart or especially in our professional context, that fear comes up from all of us all the time. And how do you manage it? And what I'm here, what I'm here to say is you invite it to dinner. If you don't want to have dinner with it, at least invite it for coffee. Sit down and have a chat with that fear. Okay, so what's going to happen? What's going to happen if I don't give a great presentation to the board? What'll happen? Oh, well, you know what'll happen. They'll, they'll. They'll be embarrassed. You're. You're, you know, your GC is going to. Is going to think you're an idiot. And then what's going to happen? Okay, then what's going to happen? Well, then you going to get fired. And then what's going to happen? Well, Gez, then you're going to have no money and you're going to lose your home and you're going to end up under a bridge eating cat food out of a can with a fork. Oh, interest.

I've gone there.

You know, and then you kind of going, okay, let's back up a minute. Like it really. Cat food under the bridge. And, and it helps because it helps you see what aspect of your fear is real and what's imagined.

And.

And then it takes the power out of it. It's. The running from it is so devastating because it will always catch you. It will always outrun you. It will catch you. It will catch you in the middle of the night. It'll catch you.

When?

Wherever you go. So, yeah.

So, because we were talking about contingencies, right? And planning for them and how sometimes you can't plan. There's no point because you're setting yourself up. When does it make sense to think about the future, to plan for the future? When. And I guess. But let's put it in a different context, for it's not just in illness, although I think that that's probably one of the most stark examples, right? Where you, you just are forced to have to be in this place, but you've lost your job and you don't know if you'll get another job. You don't know, but you want to plan your life, you want to plan things for your family, you want to. How do you think about these things? How do you. If you. And I'm sure you have clients who are saying, like, I'm in crisis right now, I'm in career crisis, how do I frame that up? What kinds of guidance would you offer up for someone?

Yeah, you know, Joy, it's one of the. This, this question is so profound because there isn't one path. There isn't one answer. I can't sprinkle brilliance and make it. Make every contingency work for every person. There are times when you just are forced to pause. I think the thing that I've learned, though, is how you use that pause. And if you use that pause to really go inside and figure out, well, what do I love? What gets me out of bed? What matters? What gives this life of mine, not the life I wish I had. This one. This one right here, right now. What gives it meaning? That's where you start, right? What do I need is another big question. Most of my clients who are in crisis around career are like, well, I have to. I have to keep this job. I need this job. I need the money. And we always, always inquire and dig into that. Okay. Have you crunched the numbers? Have you sat down? Do you know how much money you need? Do you know how much you spend? Do you. Do you really, really know? And I find that for most people, again, it's like moving toward the thing you fear. Right. It's so liberating for most people to realize, oh, I. I thought I needed this, but actually, we could probably live for a year with this. That's not true for everyone. It just isn't. But if you don't look, then your gremlins are going to decide, and your gremlins are going to tell you you need a lot more than you have. And now you're going to be under the bridge with your whole family eating cat food.

I mean, I don't mean. Well, it is. It is funny because that is where. Where our heads go, and. Right. We don't really think through this in. In a logical way. So one of the things that I also found really amazing that I didn't know about you until I was reading your. And here we. We've spoken, we've. We've shared. But I didn't know that you used to be a nurse.

Yeah.

I mean, talk about career shift from nurse to lawyer. Right. And then lawyer to coach. And so you've had the queen of the pivot. Well, you would.

You would. I didn't know your whole story until I've listened to, like, whoa.

I pivoted. Let me tell you. Yes. I'm. I'm like, you know, this is me. I'm a pivoter. But. But I don't know. That was pretty dramatic. And I can't help but think. I mean, here you were an oncology nurse, right?

Yeah.

And I don't know if things all play out in this beautiful storyline, but Was there anything from your past that you think supported your. Your next step? I mean, was there anything that made sense? Because so often I'm a big. I'm a big narrative. Like, everything has a narrative. I don't know what the story is, but at some point there's a. There's a narrative thread. Yeah. And I can't help but think that there was one for you. Or maybe not. Maybe.

Oh, my God, was there ever? It's so stunning to me now. It's enough to make me believe in something, which I could say what that something is that I believe in. But I'm quite convinced at this point that our lives, whether we feel connected or not, our lives of energetic connection, and that that through line and that thread will be discoverable to all of us at some point in our lives. I don't know when, but for me, it seems really clear. I mean, here's how my narrative thread goes. I was 11 years old when my father died suddenly overnight. Ruptured aortic aneurysm, gone. Shattered my entire world. He was the one who loved me unconditionally, knew who I was. He was my safety, and now he was gone. I ended up becoming a nurse or going to nursing school intellectually at the time because it was the easiest path to get into the best school. Because back then, some of these big universities still had nursing schools, undergraduate nursing schools, and nobody, you know, that was only for girls. Nobody really wanted those careers. So I was like, oh, I'll go to Duke, but I'm going to get in the door through the nursing school, and then I'll transfer. But I. I was like, wow, this is really interesting. So I stayed. And I didn't want to become an oncology nurse. I wanted to deliver babies. But I got to San Francisco at a time when there were absolutely no jobs because the insurance industry had just been reformed by Washington and all the hospitals were freaking out. So I waited tables and I worked in nursing registries, and I applied and applied and applied and got. The first job I could get was oncology. And it was at the very moment when the AIDS epidemic was taking off in San Francisco. And I was living in the mission, in a house where I was the only woman and the only straight person, and everyone was dying. So I lived for those five years as a nurse in the land of the dead and the dying. And it brought me right up against it, you know, right there. I ushered so many people out of this world. So many people, countless people. And it's been a through Line. I've helped in the time since I stopped being a nurse. I've helped friends whose parents were dying. I've sat by bedsides. I've held vigils. I've helped ease people out. And being close to that didn't make it easier when I got diagnosed, but has made the path much more clear for me since my diagnosis. I've gotten a lot of clarity around what a good death looks like, what I want, what matters. So much that I've learned that just connects it all, you know?

So I promised I would only pop in if I have a burning question, but I actually have a burning comment, which is, you really brought a flashback. I used to be in the theater. You really brought a flashback to me of those years. And I just want to thank you. You probably helped so many people, and there weren't a lot of people who were willing to help like that.

I'm sorry.

Feel it.

Thank you for that work you did, because I'm sure it made so many people their life, their lives and their deaths so much better. And it's really important work. So I just wanted to. That was a burning comment I wanted to make.

Thank you. Well, and you know what? Your tears mean the same thing. Those of us who were there know that we have ptsd. We. We know. All of us know, because it was. It was so bizarre. It was such a bizarre time on just so many levels. That could be a whole nother. Right. That could be a whole nother conversation, but there's something about being with the dying that. That teaches on a level that you can't learn any other way.

Right? Yeah. Not again. Well, so. But that. But that, to. To me is the through line, too, is that there's. There are people who have witnessed this place where it's the unvarnished truth of life, where this wisdom comes out of it. And you've experienced it as a nurse, as a patient, and as a coach. You're now able to guide people through these moments of such intense transition. Right. I. And. And this week, I. I was shocked to learn that. Not someone I was close to, but he. He was a colleague. Andrew Nicheson. He is the founder of WE Media. He's. He's terminally ill. And he shared with this community and just said, you know, I don't know when the last day will be, just that it's coming fairly soon.

And.

And he shared this. It was like a meditation of everything in his. In his head. And you could ask why, but he simply wanted to let folks know while he was able. What this was. And I thought, what a gift.

Yeah.

Because most of us either can't talk about it or express or support or help or do anything in these moments, or we do it after when we're done and we're able to say like, wow, that was rough, guys. But look at me now. And it's got the little promotional spin and we don't really need to talk about the desperation and this place we were in where nothing mattered.

Right.

Nothing else mattered. Right. Yeah. So I thought it was a gift because here, you know, made my problems. I'm like, wow, this is from someone who really is dealing with an existential issue. And how does that impact. And it just gave me the perspective. It's like, thank you for sharing that from a place of such utterances. Gifting. Right. Because he didn't know that to us. He didn't know his community.

Just.

Just like you haven't owed us a. A real walk through of what it is like to go through.

This is why I do it, Jory. Ultimately, the reason I write, the reason I'm here, the reason I'm talking about this deeply vulnerable personal thing, which is really like, I'm going to die because there's no cure for my disease. I. I'm in remission. So maybe that's a ways off, but that's just true. And if you. If you show others that we can talk about it. There's a lot of folks out there living with chronic disease, hidden diagnosis.

They.

They're coming out of the woodwork. Since I started writing, people I used to work with are writing to me and saying, hey, I got what you got. Nobody knows. Nobody knows.

Wow.

And the tragedy of that, how hard that is. Yeah.

Not have anyone witnessing with you. Right. And how much. I don't know. I won't say easy. But how much different it would be if you had that support of your community or if you had that ability to connect. So you're. You're giving them. You're caring for them just as much as you're caring for your patients.

That's. That's the purpose is. Is helping people see that we all suffer in this world. You can't get through it without that. And if you can name your suffering and claim it, you know, tell people, you'll be amazed, truly amazed at how many people want to help you, want to make it less lonely. You just have to let them.

We are almost at time. I want to point out one resource that you shared with me. We. We had a little back and forth on, on Substack after I wrote a piece called the Art of Bricklaying, which is about my own process of understanding how to structure a life when things are not going the way you planned. And you brought up a book called Composing a Life by. Is it Mary Catherine Bateson?

Mary Kathleen Bateson?

Yep. Yes. Margaret Mead, if you're familiar with, with the famous anthropologist and scholar and I've started reading it and I find it remarkable. I, I recommend it for everybody and I'd love for you to share why you recommended it. But I will say that if there's one, one thing that I'm getting from it, it's. This book was written in 1989 and it's about, it's, it's her exploration. She's also an anthropologist. Her exploration into this whole idea of improvising careers, something that women have had to do. And I thought maybe this was just me or just our community. We're all kind of making this up as we go because we have friends who are successful doctors, lawyers, entrepreneurs. Like there was ever a very clear cut path. The fact is there is no path. There isn't even for those who seemingly had that. And if you're very successful, doesn't mean that you had it all laid out. You had to hustle there, you had to improvise to get to that place. That's just the condition of being, I think a professional woman is what I gathered. And I found it very liberating because I realized that we're all improvising and I read it.

Jury. In 1992, when I had a newborn and a full time career in big law and I was dying, you know, I, I felt like, oh my God, this, this whole thing is a bait and switch. What the hell am I gonna do? It was a really tough time and she taught me, oh, it's not, it doesn't have to be linear. You can compose, you can make a quilt of your life, you can, you know, you can have musical scores and there are periods in your life when you're going to be, want to put your energy toward elderly parents, toward children, toward your own illness, toward something else. And then, and then that's a chapter, that's a piece. And I found it so, so reassuring and calming at a time when all I understood was the patriarchal model of this linear career that should end in some sort of utopian state of success. You know.

That's right, that's right. That's a mirage.

And that's why what you're doing with optionality.

This is why we're doing what we're doing. And I am learning from the master improvisationalist Elizabeth o'. Hannon. So with that. Thank you.

Thank you.

As I knew I would get so much out of this. And I'm guessing Elisa, too.

Thank you. Thank you very much. It was an absolute joy.

Thank you so much.

Yeah. All right, bye.