Lindsey Gendke

In July of 2023, I became a boss (read: chair of the English department). In July of 2024, to mark my 40th birthday, I journaled a version of what appears here. But I didn’t post it. I’ve been too shy to write publicly about this new season of life. Plus, I’ve just been too busy. But I’m re-purposing my 40th birthday post now, as a New Year’s post, in hopes of re-starting a hobby I love. It’s time to look away from the never-ending leadership challenges and carve out space again to write and heal, and maybe help someone else do the same. So here you go…a retouched 40th birthday post, five months late…

Life as a Leader, Life at 40

The nutshell of life at 40 is this: In this season, my emotions roller coaster more often than I’d like. I have some awesome days, but also days (even weekends) when I fall into bed, beaten down, not understanding how to do this: run a department, run a family, just get supper on the table. In this season, I bargain with God and talk to my counselor about my life’s assignment that sometimes feels too heavy. And I keep coming back to questions like these:

How can we be in this world when we are bowed down with grief or pain? When we feel dark and depressed, how can we function at work, or with our kids, or even with ourselves?

As I’ve journaled and prayed and counseled over the last two years, one clear answer God has given for surviving my current season–my leadership season–is voice transformation. Below are three steps that have helped me adopt a newer, healthier voice when that intruder voice in my head tells me, “I can’t show up today.”

Step 1: Redirecting Negative Voices

This first step involves redirecting our “default” voice–or suppressing what initially wants to come out. This step involves exercising self-control in public places, and then funneling the negative voice into controlled avenues for expression, like a journal, with a friend, family member, or counselor.

We should suppress our negative feelings a good amount of time, because how else would we function at work, school, and home (especially us pessimists)? Especially now that I’m in leadership, I’ve realized it’s good to squelch that negative voice sometimes. However, we should not squelch it forever. If you’re familiar with my writings, you know that I have often expressed my pain in order to work through it. But now as a boss lady, it’s not appropriate to vent my emotions just anywhere. I have to be more selective.

For my dissertation, I had to make a conscious shift in tone and person. See, I identified so much with the college students I was writing about, that I wrote my early drafts using first-person pronouns. “As a college student, I needed to be able to write about my life experiences and be able to connect them to classroom learning.” But by the final drafts, my voice had to shift from a personal, vulnerable voice into a voice of authority.

Step 2: Exercising a Voice of Authority

So, I stepped into my teacher voice. For later dissertation drafts, I transformed my first-person pronouns (I/me) into third-person pronouns (they/them): “Our college students need to be able to write about experiences in their lives and connect those to classroom learning.” In this way, I put distance between myself and the topic. Just as we ask our college students to gain the “discourse of the academy,” writing my dissertation in this way was a good exercise in assuming a voice of authority.

As I revised my dissertation, my chair, Dr. Jim Warren, helped me make this transformation. He pointed out where my work was too personal, and where I was stepping out of the bounds of my authority as an English teacher/scholar. “Do you want to be a writing teacher, or a therapist?” he once asked me. “Both,” I answered, grinning. But I digress.

Developing a Voice of Authority at Home

Outside of work, I’ve also worked with my counselor to develop my voice of authority at home. Many sessions have been spent pouring out my worries about how I am ill equipped to be a mom, how I don’t want to screw up my kids. And my counselor has helped me take a step back and consider things more objectively: “Are your children neglected?” No. “Is there addiction or abuse in your household?” No. “Are your kids fed, clothed, and do they generally feel safe?” Yes. “Do they know that you love them?” Yes. “Then celebrate what is going well.” “Be the mom, be the boss, and don’t feel bad for setting limits. God does this with us: He says, choose life, or choose curses. Just do it God’s way.”

Thank God for the tool of voice transformation. By His grace, I am transforming into someone my kids can be proud of. Speaking of kids and college students, sometimes I still feel like one…and that’s when I realize I need remediation for arrested development.

Step 3: Remediating Arrested Development

Arrested development. That’s what trauma does to you. Hijacks the brain, so you can’t focus on those skills you should be learning at your given life stage–but instead you are working to simply remain calm, breathe, process seemingly threatening input in your environment (usually you are not in actual danger, but your senses say you are).

So, you can find yourself 30, 40, even 50, 60, and 70, trying to learn coping skills you should’ve learned much earlier in life. Anyone with me?

Parent or Child? Boss or Subordinate? Or Both?

Many times in the past ten years of parenthood, I have identified more with the child role than the parent role. At work, I still sometimes have to remind myself that I am the boss, and not the freshly graduated newbie (oh wait…I kind of am that, too;). So, I am both the child and the parent, the subordinate and the boss. Broken, yet called to heal.

Actually, this is the human condition. Because this is a broken world, we are all broken, and we all need care, while we are called to provide care to others. Wow. Heavy.

Yes indeed, often we find ourselves in a strange double role. I thank my God that He has allowed me to lead even while I still have so much to learn–to be a “boss” while I’m still quite a mess.

Actually, admitting that I am still a mess has, strangely, helped me be a better boss. Providentially, some of the skills I’ve needed for motherhood I’ve also needed for the job, and vice versa. Little kids are not the only ones who need comforting and soothing; sometimes seasoned men and women on the team need those things as well.

And I realize we give a gift to our children, and our team members, by allowing them to express themselves, and then dwelling with them while they calm down. They (the kids, and the coworkers, and the college students) and I are working on these skills together (although they might not realize it)–talking ourselves down from emotional heights, transforming our voices, telling ourselves and others, “It’s okay.”

As I’ve learned from my counselor, it has typically been the mother’s job to soothe her children. Often the mother’s voice is the first one children hear when they need emotional care. In thinking about all of this, I realize that, in a strange twist, I’ve now become a mother at work. Just like when I was a new baby mama, now, as a new “professional mother,” I need to seek out other mothers–and fathers. I am thankful for those colleagues who have mentored and are mentoring me. None of us can do this job–work, home, LIFE–alone.

So, to return to my opening questions: How can we be in this world when we are bowed down with grief or pain? If we feel dark and depressed, how can we function at work, or with our kids, or even with ourselves?

We do two things: we seek help for the deep hurts and seasonal growing pains with counselors, prayer partners, or other trusted people. But in the meantime, we exercise our God-given ability to choose new, appropriate voices for the various public roles and responsibilities we have to maintain. In so doing, we can inhabit and grow into our God-given identities–we can write and speak to our roots, to return to where this blog all started. Thank you, God, for giving us the tools of writing, speaking, expressing, and transforming* into the roles YOU assigned us.

May 2025 be a year in which God continues the work He has started in all of us (Phil. 1:6). Happy New Year, my Friends! Love, peace, and a big virtual hug to you all.

*Both in and out of English studies, theorists contend that language creates or constructs reality–and identity. As an English scholar, I am not comfortable with many of the current theories on the table. As a Christian, I believe we have to be careful when we talk about constructing reality, or identity, with our words. These days, people are using language to claim identities that are not God-given; and Christians, while they should show love to all, should not participate in such reconstructions. Rather, for those who call themselves Christians, the test of identity should entail consulting the Bible and asking whether God intended us to have those identities or not.