I’m a sucker for comeback tours, bootstraps-to-boardroom journeys, and defy-the-odds underdogs. Spontaneous remission. Magic.

It’s even more fun when they all come together.

My list of favorite inspirations stories is long. It includes:

Expecting Adam: A True Story of Birth, Rebirth, and Everyday Magic, by then unknown-to-me but eventual teacher, Martha Beck. Her intellectual, achievement-based, Harvard life turned upside-down when she learned she carried a child with Down’s Syndrome. Adam filled her life with wonder, and their story built the foundation for her new, wildly successful career. This memoir, gifted to me during a violent relationship I didn’t know how to leave, helped me hold on during the darkest era of my life.

Anita Moorjani wrote about her near-death experience in Dying to Be Me: My Journey from Cancer, to Near Death, to True Healing. In a coma, overcome by malignant tumors, Moorjani “left her body” and experienced what she described as infinite love. When she returned to her body, doctors couldn’t believe she woke up, much less recognized those who treated her while in the coma. They were even more baffled when her tumors began to shrink. Hers is the most medically documented spontaneous remission in history. Her story filled me with hope and helped me to treat myself with love and self-acceptance.

Swimming with Elephants: My Unexpected Pilgrimage from Physician to Healer, by my colleague Sarah Bamford Seidelmann, just came out in May, 2018. As a successful physician specializing in surgical pathology, her life looked perfect. But when Sarah was diagnosed with ADD, she took a 6-month sabbatical to explore a strong pull toward personal transformation. She later left medicine to become a shamanic practitioner.

I could go on and on.

Biographies, memoirs, and personal accounts inspire vision, ideas, and solutions in the best of times. They’ve gotten me through hard times, helped me to believe that I could survive, shown me the way through when I thought I’d reached the end.

But I want more.

I’m especially interested in stories about people who faced illness, burnout, getting fired, or even tragedy. Then, despite or perhaps because of those challenges, they found purpose, their best work, success beyond that they’d lost or imagined.

I so crave these stories that I’m on a mission to find them, collect them myself. I mentioned this to Sarah, one of the author’s mentioned above. In addition to her beautiful books, Sarah interviews interesting people who might have something sweet to share with the world on her Hummingbird Series. After I told her about my vision to compile stories about callings, she invited me to interview! You can watch “Why Your Illness Just Might Be Your Calling: Meet Jennifer Shryock” on her Youtube channel, here.

Sarah encouraged me to gather and share the success stories I seek and she made the process look easy and fun! So here I go!

Introducing RAIN Sessions, an interview series about Callings.

Here’s the plan: I’ll interview people and share their stories. I’ll meet virtually with folks called to their best work through tragedy, lay-off or firing, illness, inspiration, … you name it. The series will focus on real people’s real stories about how dark times (or bright vision) guided them to something different, bigger and better than they might have imagined.

I’m looking for success stories! I want to bask in inspiration. As you may know, I got sick and my healing process guides me and my work. I now help people find their own callings, their purpose, and take inspired action to create a love affair with their work. My health continues to gradually improve and I’m in love with my work and my clients, but I’m still healing and still working toward the new vision. I’d love to hear more success stories, more evidence for inspiration. And I think you might, too.

I might also use RAIN Sessions to spotlight clients — what they do, neat projects they completed, challenges they overcame– and other fun stuff.

Do you know a great story?

I’m looking for people and stories to feature for RAIN Sessions!

Know someone who encountered a painful transition and found or created success in a new way? Is it you?

Or are you a client who would allow me to interview you? We could talk about some of the issues we worked through together via coaching, interview coaching, or about your personal branding or job search. Or a project you worked on. Or something else. I’m open to ideas!

Whether you know an interesting story you’d like to nominate or would be willing to share your own, I’d love to hear from you!

Email me at jennifer@rainmakerresume.com, reach out via my Contact form, or give me a call. 406.530.9249. I’d love to hear from you!