Anna A. McCombs, Esq.

The Career I Never Planned: There Is More Than One Right Order for a Woman’s Life

Some of the most important decisions in our lives do not look particularly important when we are making them.

They do not always arrive with a five-year plan or the certainty that we are choosing the right path. Sometimes they begin with an unexpected opportunity, a frustration we can no longer ignore, or a person who sees something in us that we have not yet imagined for ourselves.

When I look back at my life, I can connect those moments in a way I could not when I was living them.

My career did not follow a straight line. Neither did motherhood. And perhaps that is one of the things I most want other women to know: there is more than one right order in which to build a life.

Women are asked to make enormous decisions while we are still figuring out who we are going to become. What career will you choose? Do you want children? When will you have them? Will you stay home? Will you go back to work? Can you build a serious career and still be the mother you want to be?

Beneath those questions is often another one:

What if I choose wrong?

My original path was medicine. I studied pre-med and worked as an emergency medical technician in New York City. Then came September 11, 2001. I was living and working in New York at the time, and like so many people, the experience changed the way I thought about life and the future.

I did not stop caring about medicine. Another path simply began to present itself.

That path was real estate.

I purchased my first home, a four-family property in Queens. The broker who sold it to me encouraged me to get my real estate license and work with him. I did, eventually earning my broker’s license and becoming an investor myself.

After college, I spent several years working in real estate before another frustration changed my direction.

I was working on challenging transactions and became frustrated when the attorneys involved understood the law but did not always understand the business realities behind the deal. Investors often approach real estate differently. When you have been the person investing your own money, evaluating risk, and trying to make the numbers work, you understand a transaction from a perspective that cannot simply be learned by studying for the bar.

Eventually, I decided that instead of being frustrated by the problem, I wanted to become part of the solution.

I went to law school.

My goal was to build a legal practice informed by my actual experience in real estate, brokerage, and investing.

What looked like another career change was not starting over. I was building on everything that came before it.

During law school, however, I was wrestling with a question that had nothing to do with an exam.

I asked my dean something I suspect many ambitious women have asked themselves:

Can women really have it all?

Her answer has stayed with me ever since.

She told me we can—but not necessarily all at the same time.

I could not have known then how much I would come to understand those words.

There is tremendous pressure on women to believe that a successful life should unfold according to a particular schedule. Build the career. Establish yourself. Have the children. Be present for them. Continue advancing professionally. Take care of everyone.

And somehow make all of it look effortless.

My life did not happen in that order.

I had my children after law school and after establishing myself professionally. Motherhood did not erase the woman or professional I had been before it. It added another dimension to my life—and eventually led me somewhere I never expected.

Because of my children, I became connected to their schools and our community. Eventually, I was asked to run for the school board.

I sometimes think about how unlikely that chapter would have been if my life had happened differently.

By the time that opportunity arrived, I brought with me a law degree, years of business and real estate experience, and the maturity that comes from negotiating difficult situations, advocating for others, evaluating risk, listening to competing perspectives, and working toward solutions.

And then motherhood brought me to a place where those skills could serve an entirely different purpose.

Once again, something I had never planned became part of the path.

That is why I no longer think “having it all” means having everything at the same time.

Perhaps it means allowing ourselves to build our lives in chapters.

There may be a season when a career requires more of us and another when our children do. We can step forward professionally, step back when life requires it, and step forward again.

A decision does not have to be permanent to be meaningful. And something that happens later than we planned may arrive at exactly the right time for the person we have become.

When I look back now—medicine, emergency medical work, real estate, investing, brokerage, law, motherhood, and public service—I do not see unrelated choices.

I see accumulation.

Each chapter gave me something I needed for the next.

So, to the woman wondering whether she chose the wrong career, waited too long, wants something different, or cannot possibly fit everything she wants into one life:

Your life does not have to happen in the same order as someone else’s to be successful.

Do not confuse a nonlinear path with a lack of direction. Do not assume that changing course means everything you built before was wasted.

Some of the most important decisions in our lives do not look particularly important when we are making them.

Sometimes we recognize them only later, when we look back and realize we were never starting over.

We were building.