Finding Peace

So wrote the Rev. Dr. John Watson, a minister of the Free Church of Scotland, under the pseudonym Ian Maclaren in a late 19^th Century edition of The British Weekly.

Watson’s message is a time-honored, universal truth.  It’s simple yet profound, powerful yet gentle. It speaks to humility, grace, compassion, and empathy.

 

It’s the underpinning of Brooke Purcell’s credo, one formed through a wealth of personal experience marked by gratifying success and overwhelming loss. In a complicated, treacherous world, it inspires her, motivates her, and guides her, and it has evolved into the raison d’être for the 1997 Collegiate graduate’s life’s work.

 

This is her story.

 

After a stellar and rewarding career as a student, musician, and athlete (cross country and track), Brooke spent four amazing (her words) years at Dartmouth College where she graduated in 2001 with a B.A. in both psychology and romance languages.

 

“I thought about going into clinical psychology work,” she said of her next-step plan. “Something happened. I feel like I literally fell out of bed one morning and said, ‘I’m going to go to law school.’”

 

First, though, she spent a year teaching Dartmouth students who were studying in France and Mexico before she enrolled in the University of Virginia School of Law.  

 

She debated a career in either public international law or corporate law and ultimately accepted a position with Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton, and Garrison in New York, a firm where she had served a summer associateship, then deferred her start to accept a Fulbright Fellowship that allowed her to work at a law firm and study at a business school in Mexico City.

 

Once she returned, she spent much of her time at Paul Weiss in the mergers and acquisitions department, then followed a mentor to Covington and Burling, also in New York City, where she focused on Latin American transactions.

 

“I appreciated the challenge,” she said. “There were elements of it I enjoyed. There were people I enjoyed working with. I was completely absorbed and completely dedicated.”

 

Very long story short: At UVA, she met a fellow law student from Australia. They began dating in the fall of 2004, and though their professional journeys caused them to be separated by distance for extended periods of time, they remained close and ultimately married in September 2009.

 

In January 2011, they moved to Melbourne, his hometown, where she continued her career with Arnold, Bloch, Leibler doing international mergers and acquisitions.

 

“I was still taking pride in doing my job well,” she said. “I liked the people I worked with, but there was a certain passion missing. That started to take a toll. It started to wear on me.”

 

As did the challenges of her marriage. She sought help through therapy. The couple went to counseling.

 

Their son Riker (named after Brooke’s father) was born April 29, 2013, but it was soon clear that their marriage was over. In August, she and Riker, now four months old, left Melbourne and moved to Richmond.

 

“It was a dark, dark time,” she said.  “This is not the way I thought things would be. The ground had shifted completely underneath my feet, but I knew even then that I would come back in some sense and regain my career in some way. I knew that I had the love of my family. I knew I had friends. I knew that I had this absolutely amazing child. The part that I couldn’t make better was that he was going to be literally an ocean away from his father and the marriage was over.”

 

Brooke’s first order of business was regaining equilibrium.

 

“A large part of the process,” she said, “was saying to myself, ‘No matter what, every day I’m going to make sure I’m able to smile at my child.’ I knew I had to take care of myself. I knew I’d have to accept help. I knew I’d have to get exercise and sleep, although with a child, that’s hard. And I knew I’d have to find therapy and programs and people to talk to who could help me work through this.”

 

Through a family friend, she learned of a divorce recovery workshop at First Baptist Church.

 

She was hesitant about the group setting and wasn’t sure anyone would truly understand her circumstances, but in September 2014, a year after she returned, she went anyway.

 

“I remember sitting in a room full of about 85 people hoping I had made a good decision,” she said. “We went into small groups. We had two facilitators who had been through the program themselves.”

 

Once she heard the stories, she knew she was in the right spot. While her own story was unique and compelling, everyone else’s was also unique and compelling in its own way. She knew that, while others could not feel her pain, others felt their own pain. This was, indeed, a community of kindred spirits.

 

Part of her recovery was returning to work. After passing the bar, she joined Hunton & Williams in August 2014 in the practice of corporate law. In October 2015, she moved to Hirschler Fleisher as a partner specializing in investment management.

 

While working full time and raising her child, she continued with the recovery workshop and, a year after she began, became a facilitator.

 

“Now,” she said, “I was the person helping those folks who were feeling lost. I was helping them as I had been helped. I was walking them through the emotional process of grieving the divorce, reckoning their feelings, and finding a future with hope.

 

“It was so rewarding to earn someone’s trust and earn the right to hear stories that were pretty horrific. I found it incredibly rewarding to use the trust, the stories they shared, and the skills I had gained to help them move from a place of often hopelessness to one of freedom.”

 

And she found that she was re-evaluating her life’s goals. What has meaning? she wondered. What’s fulfilling? What’s my true calling? What will provide true happiness?

 

“My son was a toddler,” she said, “and I would come home from a work day tired. But I would come back from facilitating a workshop, and I would be glowing. That might sound strange because we were talking about dark things, but it was inspiring to me.

 

“I thought back to when I first arrived back in the United States with my son and remembered that promise I made to myself that every day I would be able to smile at him.”

In order to help others who are struggling navigate their life’s challenges, she pursued educational opportunities through a program at Columbia University as well as CDC Divorce Coach Training.

“It was important,” she said, “that I offer to people something more than my sense of myself as an empathetic person.”

 

So began Purcell Coaching in the summer of 2017. Its mission is “Coaching for Change.” Her areas of expertise are divorce coaching, career coaching, and executive coaching.

 

“What I experienced going through my divorce and then deciding to separate myself from the professional identity of a lawyer,” she said, “was that there are elements similar in terms of ending a marriage and making a major career transition: grief and feeling displaced, confusion, and wondering about the future.

 

“One thing I’ve learned is to accept the pain and feelings that come with hurt or loss. Pushing them away doesn’t destroy them. They come back up later. I learned to walk through the feelings and process them and take care of myself and figure out what it would take to be able to smile at my child.

 

“Getting through it is finding a way to watch that emotional maelstrom and realizing that that is not who you are. I tell my clients, sometimes when they come to me very distraught, that ‘Your feelings are the weather. You are the whole sky. From that larger perspective, you can make clearer decisions. You can start to work in your best interests.’”

 

As in the athletic arena, the role of a coach is not to micromanage but to guide, direct, mentor, and enable others to become the best version of themselves they can be. Though the venue might be different, the principle is the same.

 

“You help them do their best thinking,” Brooke said. “You ask the right questions. Because you have visibility into someone’s blind spot, you help them understand where they are in the process and think clearly about how they’re going to move through the pain in a way that gives them dignity and confidence. It’s important to anyone who’s walking down a path like the end of a marriage or some other personal tragedy to know that they are not alone.”

 

In recent months, the coronavirus pandemic has changed the landscape and created unforeseen issues for some of those with whom Brooke works closely.

 

“Every marriage has challenges,” she said. “What I see from my clients now is the uniqueness of the global challenge we are all facing and the pressure that puts on people. Sadly, not every marriage will survive this time in our history.”

 

In the early fall of 1995, when Brook was a high school junior running cross country for the first time, she experienced heat-related problems during a meet at J.R. Tucker High and collapsed just past the finish line. Coaches and athletic trainers ministered to her, the rescue squad was summoned, and she was transported to the hospital where she was treated and released later that night.

 

It was a harrowing experience, but she forged ahead, drew on the support of her teammates, and ultimately regained her confidence, attained personal success, and contributed greatly to the success of her teams over the next two years.

 

That experience proved to be a microcosm of the transformational sequence of events that would occur a lifetime later. Now, all is good. She’s happy and fulfilled. She’s found meaning in her long and devious journey.

 

“Most people would say it’s not the height of wisdom for a single parent to start her own business when she could be gainfully employed by another enterprise,” Brooke said, “but from my new perspective, I came to believe in myself and believe in my vision and believe in what I felt I was being called to do.

 

“I feel so much more at home now in myself. I feel so much prouder now for what I’m doing and how I’m living than I ever did. One of the things I’m most grateful for is the way that experience of being broken let in not just the light of my new life but the ability for me to see other people more fully and appreciate and soften what they’re going through.

 

“There’re days I feel on top of the world. There’re moments I might feel afraid. Underneath all that is a confidence I never felt before. When I look back at where things were at the lowest a world away, I feel deep gratitude that the breaking of my life allowed me to rebuild it in this way. It’s been meaningful for me and, I hope, helpful for others.”

    ~Weldon Bradshaw