I Am a Career Woman
By: Dr. Tonia Causey Bush
How do you know when you have made the greatest impact in life? Does what you are good at coincide with what you are called to do? Does this drive the career you choose? When these forces line up, you find that you are in full alignment with your divine purpose. In my early years in college I felt that pursuing a major that would prepare me to go into a career in finances would be a good choice. I didn’t know for certain if this was the right choice for me as I just went off of what I thought that I would be good at and had the potential to make a nice living from. As I moved through my freshman year in micro and macro economics courses I grew disenchanted with what I felt was a career choice that while what I thought was a great choice for some was not the best choice for me and what I was growing to understand my purpose to be. I could not feel a connection. Through the recommendation of some classmates, I took a course on Education and Anthropology with the late Dr. John Ogbu. I immediately connected to content covered in this class including what factors motivate students to learn and how culture can compound this. Hearing lectures and engaging in dialogue on how human interactions with others can inflluence the behavior of others spoke to something in me. I was so moved and inspired from this class that I felt like I could immediately make a difference in the lives of others. I took this learning opportunity so serious that I requested a change of major with the Dean’s office.
This marked a pivotal point on my continued journey towards what would lead me to pursue graduate degrees in education to become an elementary school teacher, a visiting assistant professor, site administrator at the middle school level, and subsequently a district office administrator. My desire to pursue a career in education afforded me an opportunity to make an impact on students of all ages, to motivate them and to foster a love and desire for learning within each of them for the past 25 years.
A career can at the most basic level offer a way to make a living and to even allow one to demonstrate a talent or a gift. A career woman understands how to use her arsenal of strength and power to shift the atmosphere of her surroundings and environment to carry out her divine assignments. A career woman balances all aspects of herself including her relationship with God, her family and home, and her mental, physical, and spiritual health, nourishment and well-being so that she can remain positioned to carry out her divine assignment and calling. A career woman remembers her “Why” and uses this to never sacrifice her sense of worth and integrity. A career woman understands that a job pays the bills but a career inspires, motivates, creates change, and transforms lives. A career woman is not bound by a title, a desk, a car, house, or salary. A career woman knows that her worth could never be bought, negotiated, or bargained for. A career woman is bound by her commitment to live out and actualize her divine purpose and calling which can only be answered by offering the world her best self. A career woman accepts help when she needs it and knows that the steps along her journey we’re not taken alone. She understands that others have always been there like guardian angels sending us everything from needed resources, to hard lessons learned to providing peace of mind that your children are being safely cared for.
I honor and give gratitude to those career women who have come before me, who have surrounded me my whole life and who have made sacrifices that I didn’t have to make or consider as they made the best of their circumstances. To those women who offer the best of themselves to the world and who have availed themselves to allow the divine light shining within them to touch, enlighten and guide us all along our journey to live in our divine purpose I say thank you. I say thank you to my supportive husband for whom I am ever so grateful to for his love and support throughout my career and has always pushed me.
