It's About What We Do

Making the jump meaningful

People often talk about the jumps they are forced to take—getting laid off or fired, being dumped, or some other action item something happen to them rather than by them. And while I think any of these actions certainly can start a jump, they should never get full credit for the rest of the story. That credit goes to the person who jumps (or who perhaps is pushed).

Enter Kelly O’Hara. Rewind several years ago and I’m on a now-defunct listserve blog of 20K+ subsbcribers. Each day this blog shares a random post written by a random blog subscriber it randomly selects, and it’s sent to all other 20K subscribers (aka strangers) from around the world.

​Kelly, a total stranger, lands in my email inbox one day in the spring of 2015. I read and then re-read, and couldn’t help but reach out. It was about a jump—from advertising to advocacy for sexual assault survivors—with an incredibly personal story behind it.

Kelly responds and we trade e-mails as modern day pen pals, connected by her powerful story and my hope to help share it (When to Jump the book was nearly a few years away… in fact, WTJ-anything was more than 8 months away). 

Fast forward to the now: Kelly remains one of the jumpers in our community I admire most, and her story in the When to Jump book stands as one of the most meaningful and important that I’ve had the good fortune of getting to share. Today, Kelly joins me on the WTJ Podcast, sharing more about her jump, why she took it, and perhaps adding real meaning to the cliche that says the we aren’t defined by what happens to us—it’s what we do about it.