Embracing Your Own Purgatory

For nearly thirty years, Geoff Curtis built an impressive professional identity. The title. The expertise. It became his armor. It shielded him from discomfort, from admitting he didn't have the answers. When the company he worked at was acquired and his role became redundant, that armor disappeared. What followed wasn't a reinvention story. It was an uncomfortable reckoning. He realized he'd spent his entire life using work to suppress his emotions.

He calls this new stage purgatory-the un...