One of our recent contributors found her power through the support of individuals on LinkedIn and has never looked back. Now, she helps others find their power through an online initiative she set up.
From Being the Fat Girl of the Office to Being the Big-Hearted Girl Online
“I’m not used to sharing my experience like this because I have always been afraid of my own shadow.
I recently turned down a handful of interviews and photoshoots because I’m still in this moment in my journey where I cannot believe even one person believes my experience enough to encourage me to keep talking.
You’re probably confused, wondering who this random stranger is talking about all these amazing opportunities she’s turning down. I must be a big deal huh? I’m the complete opposite actually. I’m a nobody, who somehow stumbled upon a decision that changed my life forever, and if you’d care to humour me by reading my story, I hope it might change your life too.
Approximately two weeks ago (on the 1st of July) I wrote a post on LinkedIn and my life today is not the same.
You see prior to this post I had engaged in a seemingly innocent friendly conversation with a complete stranger, who I now consider a friend, Dominic. During this conversation (happening publicly in the comment section) I made a faux pass by mentioning something I didn’t realise was personal to him. In that moment, despite him reassuring me I had not offended him, I felt like I had committed such a terrible insult towards him.
Something I want to share with you is that growing up, life wasn’t always easy. Learning to maturely deal with emotions and understand challenges didn’t come naturally or wasn’t really taught to me. As an adult I have carried many things I ‘learned’ as a kid. One of those things was that if I wronged someone I would have to punish myself either equally or worse.
So there I was, trying to dig myself out of a hole, putting my foot in my mouth the harder I tried. Dom asked me why I didn’t have a profile picture on my professional LinkedIn. An innocent question enough, but to me it brought back some terrible fears I had.
This is the last time I will take you back in time, it is related to this whole story I promise.
I used to work for a company that I absolutely loved working for. I had great clients who I worked with regularly, I had responsibilities that for some part allowed me to express myself creatively. I was excited to make my mark within our sector and to learn from the seniors with impressive careers. Then one day, a senior leader began working in our office and my future within the company became uncertain almost instantly.
Upon first meeting I did what I could do to be at this senior leader’s disposal. I was incredibly supportive of all that they would say, any changes they made was met with complete blind faith and optimism from me. I even on one occasion told them that I admired their career and would love to be mentored by them.
If I had to be fair on myself, I would confidently say that I did my best to be as welcoming and submissive to everything that they wanted because I wanted nothing more than to climb the career ladder and help others dare to dream. But this puppy dog obsession to please ended the moment she said that I was too fat for my job and needed to lose weight.
Upon hearing those words how did it make me feel? Well I guess in the split moment, I completely forgot the long hours I would pull to get my projects complete, how much of my time and effort I put into trying to bring together a broken team who were losing faith in the leadership and company altogether.
During their reign of torment, the leader had created an environment that made grown adults cry. I wasn’t the only one who indulged in some lunch time tears in our cars, staff toilets, hidden in the canteen confiding in a supportive colleague afraid to be in the line of torment next.
I am ashamed to say I witnessed some awful behaviour; I accepted a lot of it because I was so afraid to lose my own job.
Their name calling, judging me by my weight rather than targets I was meeting, projects I was completing and positive feedback I was receiving, became such a toxic environment and it drove me into such dark depths of depression. Small little comments started to pile up, I didn’t fit into the vision they had for their dream team. I didn’t fit into the tall, white, blonde and petite look of the senior leadership team.
I mean, I’m 5 ft1, have a lot of weight to love or hate and I’m Asian. In every sense I did not fit into the mould, I had no hope, two of out of the three areas I didn’t fit were things I couldn’t change. Small microaggressions that started off as constructive and caring, became a way to make my work life more difficult.
I followed the rules, communicated with my line manager who was in complete denial that this treatment was happening. Why? My only guess is because they were given a pay rise for compliance from this senior leader. During an incredibly scary restructure there were the suspect few who feigned fear for losing their jobs when in reality secret agreements were being made for promotions and pay rises once certain undesirable people had left. One of those were me.
This kind of toxic environment affected my mental health. I felt like I couldn’t talk to anyone because if my own manager didn’t listen then who would? I’d sit in meetings listening to how untouchable this senior leader was because they were ‘friendly’ with HR and didn’t take too kindly to whistleblowing. I figured no-one was speaking out because they were afraid to be targeted next, but one of my last straws for me, was when a second colleague announced her pregnancy, we were met with a snide comment from the said senior leader saying ‘you girls should think twice about getting pregnant if you want to work for me.’
I won’t continue to bore you with every hurtful comment and difficult challenge I and so many of my colleagues faced because of this person. A person I once admired.
I got so low one day when I had worked so hard on a written project and was awaiting for final sign off from the leader. I found this piece of work in the bin, with my polite note still attached to it. I sat at my desk and received an angry email from my manager asking why my project still hadn’t been signed off.
Instantly my head told me, whatever I say, will be wrong and I went to my car and burst into tears. I was going to lose no matter what, so, should I go back into the office and take the public telling off that I had endured many times, my audience being my colleagues. Can you imagine how demeaning it is to be shouted at like you’re a kid when you’re an adult working? Or do I just go home?
On my drive home that night I called my partner and cried. I told him that either I needed to quit my job or I was going to have to take my life. I’m sorry to admit this, I am so ashamed. At that point I thought that quitting my job was just as bad as losing my life. I genuinely believed every bad thing I had been told, I felt worthless therefore I was worthless.
Despite that major breakdown in communication, I still had belief that good would triumph. I went to my doctors who had been well aware of what I was going through and he signed me off of work for two weeks.
Two weeks, just that. Within the second day of me being signed off of work, I had the company take back all of my work belongings. It was hardly the kind of behaviour that made me feel welcome to come back huh. To put it into context, this is the same company who had refused to pay an expense claim from my colleague who had to drive their own car for the company and had paid £2 in parking for work. So please excuse my questioning their motives when they sent a £100+ courier service to pick up my work equipment giving me only one hour notice that it was happening.
I was also referred to the occupational health professional team. The first ‘colleague’ I finally told my truth to. The only person in the whole organisation who came to my defence, who believed me and encouraged me to take it further. I was told to trust HR and trust the process. I did, because what more could I do?
Ultimately despite the things I reported such as bullying, racism, discrimination and money mismanagement, HR had decided my stories were simply hearsay and was not worth investigating. So what did I do? Completely defeated, I handed in my notice. Saying goodbye to the career I cared about so much, the clients who had become friends and the colleagues I had once considered as family.
I watched as my reputation was tarnished, as control was taken from me when it came to sharing this narrative and my whole illusion of management in the workplace became tainted.
For months I soul searched, I cried, I blamed myself. Then a chance meeting with Dominic lead me to face my fears.
You see for the longest time I was hiding. As a professional who works on LinkedIn everyday, I refused to post pictures of myself for fear I would be judged again. I didn’t allow personal photos of me to be taken during friends gatherings, family hang outs or even if I ‘felt cute’ I would tell myself how ugly and fat I was.
Fat was the worst word I could think of, but if I really think about it now, I was saying some truly awful things about myself.
When I finally posted my story, I wasn’t expecting anyone to listen to some fat girl crying. Be told enough that you don’t matter and you will believe it in your heart.
The morning after the post, I woke up to over 1 million views. We had hundreds of thousands of likes and comments and most of them were supportive.
I needed 500,000 strangers to tell me what I experienced was/is not normal to realise that it was wrong. I suddenly had all of these internet friends, sharing their experiences, crying with me, empowering myself and others. My heart continues to feel so much gratitude for the kindness of strangers. I don’t know what I can ever do to repay everyone for helping me find my voice, but now I’m on a mission. I want to help others reclaim control over their lives, to find the power to own their successes and their failures, because really failures are just successes, we haven’t quite perfected yet.
I know I’m corny and incredibly cheesy, I may be scatter-brained and totally emotional, but that’s okay because that’s what makes me, me.
I want others to start owning themselves, be proud of who they are because now is the time for survivors of discrimination to start sharing their truth. That’s why I started a social movement called The Emotion Exchange, a safe place for people to share their experiences, feel empowered and if they need it, cry whilst listening and learning. We want to turn around this belief that tears and emotion makes you weak, we want to change this idea that you’re weak if you’re vulnerable, essentially The Emotion Exchange is a place where people can find power in their struggle.
I want to make it clear that I don’t want any negativity to be shared with my previous senior leader, but I do hope that if they should see my post, that they think about their behaviour and do what they can to improve. They don’t owe it to me, they owe it to their team.
If there’s anything I want you to take away from my story, it’s this. I hope you stop living in fear of living your truth. Being authentically you is going to cause some waves but that’s what life is all about. Never be afraid to make people feel uncomfortable because as long as you are spreading positivity, truth and empowerment, you are doing just fine.”
This story was written by Jessica-Joan Richards, a Marketing Manager working in London. To see the original post that went viral and inspired this post, go to:
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jessica-joan-richards-481a1181_beautywithin-bodyshaming-badmanagers-activity-6684117911885500416-vqak
And the Emotional Exchange page on LinkedIn can be found here:
https://www.linkedin.com/groups/8952417
To read or share true life stories please visit stozzys.com.