Lost and Found: A Self-Story Reflection
By Jessica Maes
How and why did I land here?
For the past 20+ years I lived in Madison, Wisconsin and spent my time and energy self-employed as a marketing consultant, raising my son, and supporting my husband. Today, my son is off to college, my husband and I have relocated, and I’m pursuing a master’s degree and applying for jobs in higher education.
Looking Back
Shortly after my son was born, I began to feel personally and professionally lost. While I had freely chosen the identities of mother, wife, and business owner, I felt discouraged because I was not deriving fulfillment from any of these things. I began to withdraw from everything and everyone in my community. I lived and worked from home and had lost interest in nourishing relationships with family or friends and I ceased to cultivate any new relationships. I knew this was no way to live, yet I did not know what to do about it.
In hindsight, this would have been an excellent time to explore mental health counseling for myself, however, I had no idea how to do that. Instead, I started reading every self-help book I could get my hands on and eventually learned about positive psychology. I consumed everything written by Dr. Martin Seligman, Ph.D. and enrolled in positive psychology courses offered on the Coursera platform by Dr. Barbara Fredrickson, Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Dr. Laurie Santos, Ph.D. from Yale University, and Dr. Seligman from the University of Pennsylvania. I aspired to apply to the Master of Applied Positive Psychology program at the University of Pennsylvania because it was a low-residency format which felt accessible to my lifestyle. While I had no professional plan yet, I finally had something I was hopeful and excited about.
Then, Covid entered the mainstream and turned the world upside down. I saw lockdown as a positive thing because it evened the social playing field and I no longer felt like I was missing out on anything. Further, Covid removed my son from the chaos of his toxic high school environment where he was struggling socially and academically. Through virtual learning (what I referred to as “the absence of chaos”), my son started to thrive academically.
Once he returned to school in person a year after going virtual, he landed the lead role in the school musical and I started noticing that some of the same things he was doing and thinking while being home healing from his less-than-optimal pre-Covid school experience was helping him to thrive in the preparation process as well as when he was live on stage. I also saw it happen when he performed solos in choir and started taking college courses online while still in high school. Observing and supporting all of this got me curious about human behavior and how our environment impacts our mental wellness and our ability to thrive.
Also as a result of Covid, the University of Pennsylvania permanently shifted its program to completely virtual. This revised model, as well as the steep tuition and still needing to formulate a professional plan decreased my enthusiasm for this path and I eventually let it go. I was still interested in continuing my education, so I began researching master’s programs in Wisconsin. I was interested in Nursing, Social Work, and Integrated Nutrition, however, with my undergraduate degree in English, I felt it would take too long to acquire the needed undergraduate credits, particularly in science, to enter these programs.
Eventually, I learned about sport psychology online and it felt like a good fit based on my interests in positive psychology, mindfulness, meditation, goal setting, and supporting performers like actors and musicians. I also felt that sport psychology principles could support student academic success nicely.
To ensure I could still handle the rigor of higher education (I graduated from college in 1996), and since I had a year before my son would complete school and we would have the flexibility to relocate, I enrolled in a sport psychology course at a community college in Madison. My instructor was/is the Mental Performance Consultant for all sports at the college and a psychology professor. He was instrumental in helping me move forward with entering the Sport, Exercise & Performance Psychology program this fall through encouragement and providing a reference letter.
Although it has often felt like I was sleepwalking through life these past two decades, it turns out many experiences have prepared me for who I am today and what I want to accomplish now and in the future. I now know that I want to work in education, supporting students in their pursuit of academic success. I’m working in The Learning Center as a Writing Tutor to help me gain experience in this domain. I’m also interested in supporting actors and musicians and hope to gain experience with the theater department on campus or the regional theater company in Green Bay. I also remain entrepreneurial and hope to provide sport psychology-related consulting services once I complete the Sport, Exercise & Performance Psychology program.
Looking Forward
I’m grateful for the foundational sport psychology courses I’m participating in this semester because it is helping me put proper training and structure around many things that I philosophically believe help humans thrive. In the end, that is what it’s always been about for me: helping. Once I figured out how to help myself, I could help others, and I’m committed to doing that in all my personal and professional pursuits in the future.
Jessica is a first-year master’s student in the Sport, Exercise, & Performance Psychology program at the University of Wisconsin – Green Bay. She earned a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Wisconsin – Parkside and is currently a Writing Tutor at The Learning Center at UWGB. She is also certified as a grant writer from the University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire and from Learn Grant Writing. Connect with Jessica on LinkedIn.
