When the Life You Built Doesn’t Fit Anymore
When the Life You Built Doesn't Fit Anymore
Karen Freeland traded her personal dreams for a six-figure corporate salary, climbed to chief of staff — and woke up one day to find it wasn't enough. What she did next changed everything.
In this episode of Who We Become — Life Beyond Change, Amanda Lentz sits down with Karin Freeland to talk about the discomfort that high-achievers rarely admit out loud: the feeling that a life you worked incredibly hard to build simply doesn't fit who you really are.
Karin is a life coach, speaker, and award-winning author of Grab Life by the Dreams. But before all of that, she was chief of staff to the president of a large tech company — fueled by coffee to keep going and alcohol to take the edge off — quietly wondering if everyone else at the conference table was about to crack too.
This conversation is for anyone who has ever achieved something impressive and felt, underneath it all, a gaping hole in their soul.
The Exhaustion Underneath the Ambition
Karin describes the peak of her corporate career as a "constant logistical nightmare" — managing two young boys, a demanding travel schedule, PowerPoint presentations, and the never-ending question of who would handle childcare. Everything on paper looked right. Nothing on the inside did.
"I'd be in a conference meeting and I'm thinking — are you about to crack too? Or am I just doing this wrong? Am I broken? Because you look like you have this all together and I'm eight seconds away from a breakdown."
— Karin FreelandWhat makes this conversation so valuable is Karin's willingness to name the mechanisms of avoidance — the coffee, the alcohol, the buying of a Mercedes so she couldn't impulsively quit — without softening or reframing them into something more flattering. This wasn't just burnout. It was a slow erosion of self.
The Moments That Broke Through
There wasn't one single breaking point — there were several. The VP who died and whose colleagues returned from the funeral straight into an operations review. A week-long staycation disguised as a Bahamas vacation where Karin journaled every day. Two deaths in the family within a short span. A move to a new company that felt like hope, then revealed itself to be more of the same.
Each of these moments asked the same question, louder each time: Is this really what I was made for?
"It absolutely cannot be to make PowerPoints to justify my existence to someone else — because that's exactly what I feel like I'm doing every day."
— Karin FreelandWhen the layoff came in 2020, Karin had fantasized about it. And when it actually happened, she cried — and then donated every piece of corporate clothing she owned by that Friday. She wanted to burn the bridge. She knew herself well enough to know that without it, she might go back.
Building a Life That Actually Fits
What followed wasn't a clean, triumphant pivot. It was messy and uncertain, as reinvention always is. Karin moved her family from New Jersey to South Carolina, lowered their cost of living, wrote a book, became a certified coach, and — slowly — built a life shaped around her own values rather than someone else's metrics.
Today, she coaches between 10 AM and 2 PM most days so she's done in time to pick up her kids. She goes to speaking engagements in the South Carolina–Atlanta–Charlotte region, because that's the geography she wants. She's not a seven-figure coach, and she's refreshingly honest about that — because she doesn't need to be.
"I can hustle and I can grind — or I can build a business the way I want that's in congruency with my lifestyle."
— Karin FreelandHer husband, after watching her for five years, launched his own business too. If you'd told either of them in college that they'd both become entrepreneurs, Karin says she would have laughed in your face.
What Karin Sees in the Women She Coaches
The pattern is nearly universal: high-achieving women who say they're stuck, but who — within one conversation — reveal something they've always wanted to do. A wine bookstore. A day spa. A dog rescue. The dream was there the whole time. What's missing isn't the idea. It's the first step.
The Unexpected Calling
Near the end of the conversation, Karin shares something she says she hasn't told many podcasts before. In 2024, at a gala for an organization fighting sex trafficking, a speed painter was on stage. Karin looked up and heard — clearly, loudly, unmistakably — a question she understood as coming from God: Karen, what are you doing to stop trafficking?
She negotiated. She volunteered. She eventually came on part-time. And when someone stepped down from leadership, she found herself saying "I'll send you my resume" before she'd consciously decided to. Within months, she was interim executive director.
It's a story about obedience, about openness, and about the kind of reinvention that doesn't always look like a strategy — sometimes it looks like saying yes before you know why.
"Sometimes reinvention is quiet and obedient steps that just sort of launch you into something you never expected."
— Karin FreelandWhat "Grab Life by the Dreams" Really Means
Amanda asks Karin whether the phrase has changed meaning for her since she first named it. The answer is thoughtful: it means going all in on what your heart feels called to do, without second-guessing whether you have the capabilities. Karin's conviction is theological — she genuinely believes a creator doesn't give you a dream you're not meant to fulfill.
But it also means running your own race. Not measuring against the seven-figure coach on Instagram. Not performing someone else's version of success. Knowing when enough is enough — and recognizing that a soul-sucking job isn't worth protecting for the sake of an $8 latte.
Why This Conversation Matters
There's a version of the reinvention story we hear often: the one where someone quits their job, launches a business, and tells you it was the best decision they ever made. That story is real — but it usually skips the part where they cried after the layoff call, bought a car to keep themselves from quitting, looked around a conference table wondering if everyone else was about to crack too.
Karin tells the unglamorous version. The fear. The false starts. The new company that turned out to be more of the same. The slow, unromantic process of figuring out who you actually are when the title is gone.
And in doing so, she offers something more useful than inspiration: a map.
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