#58: Running Towards, Not Away
After months of reading her wonderful writing and communicating through many emails back and forth, I finally got to meet Lauren last night in person at a soaking dinner! She shared with us one story that I think reaffirmed the need for community.. and it totally moved me. I'll never forget it. And this piece she wrote below is yet another insight/word of advice that I'll hold on to forever as well. Thank you Lauren for all of this, and for your joyful presence and inspiration last night!
- Amanda
Lauren Culbertson lauren@restorenyc.org
Running Towards, Not Away
After a series of personally testing events my sophomore year of college, I found myself up late one night in my dorm room ignoring homework and researching schools I could potentially transfer to. When I emailed my old admissions counselor for the small college that was a close second choice to my current university, she immediately called my cell phone the next day and highly encouraged me to apply as a transfer student. Within two weeks, I received an email saying that I had been accepted.
Suddenly, I was faced with the opportunity to make a major change in my life. I made dozens of pros and cons lists (there were a lot of different factors at stake). I had difficult conversations with my closest friends. I talked to professors at both schools about my future in an attempt to gage which network would help propel me in the direction I wanted to go. I sought spiritual advice from my pastor. But I still couldn’t make a decision on what would be best.
Clarity really only came when my dad gave me some of the most valuable advice I have ever received: “When faced with the prospect of a big change, always make sure you are always running towards something and not away.”
I swallowed the truth that transferring would be running away from many, many unreconciled parts of my life. With a sense of peace, I decided to stay and “stick through it”…and the last two years of college were some of the most rewarding years of my life.
Not too long ago, I found myself in a somewhat similar position, this time with the decision to move away from my family, friends, and great job in New York City for a grad program in the London School of Economics. I made dozens of pros and cons lists. I had encouraging conversations with trusted friends. I asked people in my network who I admired out to coffee to ask questions about their professional journeys. In a short period of time, I could see that moving to London would not be a tactic to avoid some of the harder parts of life, but I would indeed be running towards something great.
Lauren's first-person bio:
Someone once told me that I "move" when I see the “earth out of alignment,” which is just a fancy way of saying that I’ve always had a natural inclination to pay attention to what happens in the margins; that’s where the most exciting things happen, after all. That brought me to Restore NYC, an anti- sex trafficking nonprofit, where I work to inspire generosity and help our fundraising team make data-driven decisions. I experience the most joy in my work when I witness two things clicking inside someone: sex trafficking is a major issue that is closer than we think, but it has a solution that we can all be a part of.