I Quit My Job and Found Myself

I didn’t plan to quit my job.

I planned to push through — because that’s what you do, right? You wake up tired, pour some coffee over your dreams, and clock in. You normalize the microaggressions and the casual racism as the price of doing business. You swallow the disrespect dressed up as leadership. You lean into the fake platitudes, the empty gestures, and you make peace with the dysfunction.

You smile through meetings that could have been emails. You perform productivity while your soul naps under the desk. You convince yourself that paychecks are proof of purpose.

Until one day, they’re not.

For me, it started with a whisper — the kind you only hear when you’re too tired to pretend.

It was the small acts of disrespect that stacked up, day after day. The side-eye glances from white co-workers when I spoke, like confidence coming from a Black woman was somehow a threat. The reminder not to use office funds for personal purchases — a reminder soaked in condescension, carrying the unspoken accusation that someone like me couldn’t be trusted.

It was seeing how people who looked like me were treated — the complaints that our very presence felt unsafe, the scrutiny we faced just for existing in certain spaces, or for simply seeking each other out for comfort and connection.

It was the dismissive tones, the eye rolls, the questioning of my work ethic — not my actual work, just my ethic, because competence in brown skin is always placed under a microscope.

It was the demand to account for every minute of my day. The curt and condescending emails. The silence from leadership when I raised concerns.

But the deepest betrayal wasn’t from my obvious adversaries. It was the silence from the ones who claimed to have my back. The ones who spoke about equity and inclusion in public, but chose their own comfort over my humanity when it really counted. Their words collapsed under the weight of their inaction.

And then came the confession — the moment someone said the quiet part out loud: “I don’t know why, but I just feel uncomfortable around you.”

That was the moment the whisper inside me turned into a roar: This isn’t it.

I ignored it at first — because racism has its own gaslighting. It teaches you to doubt your reality, to shrink your feelings, to wonder if you’re the problem. And besides, who has time for existential crises between Zoom calls?

But whispers don’t disappear. They grow teeth. They disrupt your sleep. They sit in your chest until they force you to decide: betray yourself or set yourself free.

So, I quit.

No safety net. No soft landing. Just me, my fear, and a plan to finally bet on myself — to pour my time, my talent, my energy into the private practice I had been too scared to fully claim.

Losing a Job, Finding Myself

Walking away from that job meant walking directly into uncertainty — and into a confrontation with ghosts I thought I had left behind.

My husband never saw my worth as tied to my paycheck. He stood beside me, unwavering, reminding me that I was more than my income. But my fear wasn’t born in my marriage — it was born in my childhood.

In my mother’s house, love had a price tag. As soon as we hit adulthood, we were no longer daughters or sons; we were investments that had come due. Our value lived in the money we could send home.

Every time I questioned whether quitting was the right choice, my mother’s voice returned — sharp and familiar: If you’re not paying me, you’re worthless.

Even with my husband’s love wrapping around me like a safety net, that voice was hard to silence. It lived in my bones, planted there long before I earned my first paycheck. It took real work to believe I was worthy of choosing myself — that I could be valuable simply because I existed, not because I produced.

What They Don’t Tell You About Quitting

What they don’t tell you about quitting is how loud the silence gets.

When the busyness stops, you’re left with yourself — all the parts you ignored, hustled past, or buried under performance reviews and survival mode. I didn’t just lose a job; I lost the version of me that existed for that job.

The overachiever.
The yes-woman.
The one who confused exhaustion with excellence.

I lost the illusion of security.

I had been living in a house that was crumbling, but at least it was a house. Quitting meant walking out the front door into the unknown, exposed and unanchored.

But in that emptiness, something beautiful happened — I started to hear myself again.

I heard the little girl who used to write just because the words felt good. The woman who dreamed of slow mornings and creative afternoons. The healer who wanted to create spaces where people — especially people who looked like me — could breathe without armor or apology.

I remembered why I chose this work in the first place.

Not to prove my worth to institutions that never saw it.
Not to climb ladders built on my silence.
Not to trade my truth for their comfort.

I chose this work to help people come home to themselves — and I couldn’t do that if I was actively betraying myself just to survive.

The Hardest Part Was Unlearning

Quitting is often romanticized, like it’s some bold, glamorous mic-drop moment.

But the real work comes after — when you’re standing in the quiet, face-to-face with every belief you inherited about work, worth, and survival.

I had to unlearn hustle as my love language.
I had to unlearn my addiction to proving I belonged.
I had to unlearn rest as something you earn.
I had to unlearn the lie that my value lived in my paycheck.

And slowly, I came back to me.

The me who writes without a deadline looming over her shoulder.
The me who breaks into random acts of dancing because joy lives in my bones.
The me who doesn’t have to be useful to deserve rest.
.
The me who doesn’t have to be useful to deserve rest.

What I Found

I found freedom — not the curated kind you see on Instagram, but the real kind.

The freedom to wake up without dread.
The freedom to work in ways that feed me, not drain me.
The freedom to choose myself, even when it’s inconvenient or uncomfortable.

I found out I’m braver than I thought.
Softer than I let on.
More creative than any job ever allowed me to be.

But mostly, I found out the woman I was searching for wasn’t hiding in a new title or a bigger paycheck.

She was here all along — waiting for me to stop performing and come home to myself.

And now, I know the truth:

My worth isn’t up for negotiation.

About the Author
Dr. Tanya Crabb is a licensed clinical psychologist, writer, and the creator of Dr. Brooklyn Chick: Conversations that Heal. As a Jamaican immigrant, Marine Corps veteran, and first-generation college graduate, Dr. Crabb brings humor, honesty, and hard-won wisdom to every conversation. She’s passionate about helping Black women, female veterans, and anyone tired of shrinking themselves to fit, reclaim their stories and their sense of self.

You can connect with her work at www.drbrooklynchick.com