Unstoppable Journeys: From Breakdown to Breakthrough
- Feb 13
- 3 min read
By Maryam Mehrtash
What was your turning point, the moment you decided to rise?
Every defining moment in my career came from saying yes before I felt ready. But the moment that changed everything — the moment I truly decided to rise — came after I was laid off from my Vice President role at a large media company. One phone call erased the identity I had spent years building: the title, the team, the sense of certainty.
I had always been “the strong one,” the woman who figured it out, who outworked fear, who made the impossible look manageable. But the morning I sat at my kitchen table with my severance papers, something broke open in me. I realized I had built a life that looked impressive on the outside but left no room for the parts of me craving something deeper: space, creativity, authorship, meaning.
The layoff didn’t break me, it freed me. It forced me to finally ask the question I had avoided for years: What would I build if I stopped trying to survive and started choosing myself?
That was the moment I stepped into courage and began building a life on my own terms.
What’s the biggest myth about “having it all”?
The biggest myth about “having it all” is that it’s attainable if you simply work harder, organize better, or master the perfect routine. The truth is, most women who seem like they “have it all” are actually carrying everything, the ambition, the caregiving, the pressure, the emotional load, and doing it quietly so they’re not seen as difficult or ungrateful.
Life is a series of trade-offs. Every choice has an opportunity cost. You can be a mother, a partner, and have a big career, but something will always have to give. If you’re working overtime and excelling professionally, you’re probably missing moments at home. If you pour into your family, you may sacrifice visibility at work. There’s no way around that reality.
But what’s empowering is choice. The ability to decide what you’re willing to give up and what matters most in each season. I’m a better mother when I’m thriving in my career. By choosing what fulfillment looks like for me, not what society dictates, I’m modeling for my kids that they have agency too. Children absorb our behavior; they mirror it. My hope is to raise courageous thinkers who trust their own voice and intuition.
You can have a full life, a meaningful life, a life you’re proud of. But you cannot live every version of that life simultaneously. Each season requires something different. When I was focused on climbing the corporate ladder, I sacrificed presence. When I centered motherhood, I sacrificed visibility. When I recently began writing, building my company, and working full-time I sacrificed rest.
“Having it all” isn’t the goal. Alignment is. A life shaped by values, not expectations and freedom from standards never designed for women in the first place.
How do you stay unstoppable when challenges return?
Challenges always return, that’s the cost of a meaningful life. I stay unstoppable by anchoring myself in three practices:
1. I choose courage over credentials.
I return to my north star and my why. My layoff taught me that titles can disappear, but conviction doesn’t. When fear shows up, I ask: What would the courageous version of me do next? That question has guided every decision since.
2. I let disruption become data.
Industry shifts, uncertainty, pressure, I no longer take them personally or panic. I treat them as information, as redirection. Reinvention isn’t a setback; it’s a skill. Disruption is opportunity if you lean in and embrace it, rather than let it paralyse you. I see this happening to so many people in entertainment right now.
3. I stay rooted in service, discipline, and focus.
My work — writing, speaking, building tools for leaders and high-achievers in transition — keeps me grounded in purpose. Purpose is the antidote to paralysis. When I center the people my story might help, I stay moving and motivated.
The layoff didn’t make me unstoppable. It simply stripped away the illusion that playing small was safer. Once I saw who I could become, rising wasn’t a choice, it was the only path forward.
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