155: Some of the Most Precious Gifts Come from Great Sacrifice
12/15/20 • 43 min
Marcela Niemeyer has always been an achiever, driven to be the best at whatever she sets her mind to do. In some families, that can create conflict, particularly when a parent doesn’t have the same drive, and cannot understand why a child would put so much pressure on herself to meet and exceed her goals.
But Marcela’s father understood her. He knew that if she gave up on something, it would haunt her for many years, that she would face regrets and those “what if” questions for decades.
She was miserable in those first few months of her senior year of high school, studying abroad in the United States, thousands of miles from her home and family in Brazil. It’s not because she didn’t fit in, or she wasn’t making friends. What made her miserable was that she was working so hard in academics and sports, and not meeting her own expectations of achievement.
Marcela was starting from scratch when she decided on track & field, her sport at home was swimming. Her placement in the group was the lowest of the athletes, and she wasn’t used to starting at the bottom.
Academics were a struggle too, and for the first time, she saw low grades that crushed her confidence. She called her father: “I want to come home.”
He told her she couldn’t come home. He was adamant that she stay and work through the challenges. He absolutely refused to let her give up, despite her desperate tears over the phone.
As I heard this story, I was moved to tears. I’m a parent, and I know the sacrifice her father made to say those words, to turn away from his child and tell her no, she must continue to struggle. There isn’t much worse for a parent than to witness that pain and not be able to - or to know better than to - fix it for your child.
She’s driven, and her father knew she’d figure out what to do next to make life bearable. Marcela worked hard to improve, finishing the year at the top of her team, and graduated with her class, her mother and father traveled from Brazil to watch her cross the stage and receive her diploma.
Her whole life follows that course, trying things others might be too afraid to attempt, full of curiosity about herself and the world around her, and in a constant state of learning and growing. She’s a force of life.
Enjoy learning more about Marcela Niemeyer, you’ll love her stories, her tenaciousness, and her love for life and people.
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Marcela Niemeyer has decades of experience in a variety of HR roles, and is currently on the lookout for her next adventure.
Connect with her on LinkedIn to learn more about her adventurous spirit and her gift for bringing people together, finding the diamond in the rough, no matter where she sits.
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About Sarah:
In my work with coaching clients, I guide people to improve their communication using storytelling as the foundation of our work together. What I’ve realized over years of coaching and podcasting is that the majority of people don’t realize the impact of the stories they share - on their internal messages, and on the people they’re sharing them with.
My work with leaders and people who aspire to be leaders follows a similar path to the interviews on my podcast, uncovering pivotal moments in their lives and learning how to share them to connect more authentically with others, to make their presentations and speaking more engaging, to reveal patterns that have kept them stuck or moved them forward, and to improve their relationships at work and at home.
The audiobook, Your Stories Don’t Define You, How You Tell Them Will is now available!
Included with your purchase are two bonus tracks, songs recorded by Sarah's band, Spare Change, in her living room in Montana.
Marcela Niemeyer has always been an achiever, driven to be the best at whatever she sets her mind to do. In some families, that can create conflict, particularly when a parent doesn’t have the same drive, and cannot understand why a child would put so much pressure on herself to meet and exceed her goals.
But Marcela’s father understood her. He knew that if she gave up on something, it would haunt her for many years, that she would face regrets and those “what if” questions for decades.
She was miserable in those first few months of her senior year of high school, studying abroad in the United States, thousands of miles from her home and family in Brazil. It’s not because she didn’t fit in, or she wasn’t making friends. What made her miserable was that she was working so hard in academics and sports, and not meeting her own expectations of achievement.
Marcela was starting from scratch when she decided on track & field, her sport at home was swimming. Her placement in the group was the lowest of the athletes, and she wasn’t used to starting at the bottom.
Academics were a struggle too, and for the first time, she saw low grades that crushed her confidence. She called her father: “I want to come home.”
He told her she couldn’t come home. He was adamant that she stay and work through the challenges. He absolutely refused to let her give up, despite her desperate tears over the phone.
As I heard this story, I was moved to tears. I’m a parent, and I know the sacrifice her father made to say those words, to turn away from his child and tell her no, she must continue to struggle. There isn’t much worse for a parent than to witness that pain and not be able to - or to know better than to - fix it for your child.
She’s driven, and her father knew she’d figure out what to do next to make life bearable. Marcela worked hard to improve, finishing the year at the top of her team, and graduated with her class, her mother and father traveled from Brazil to watch her cross the stage and receive her diploma.
Her whole life follows that course, trying things others might be too afraid to attempt, full of curiosity about herself and the world around her, and in a constant state of learning and growing. She’s a force of life.
Enjoy learning more about Marcela Niemeyer, you’ll love her stories, her tenaciousness, and her love for life and people.
—-
Marcela Niemeyer has decades of experience in a variety of HR roles, and is currently on the lookout for her next adventure.
Connect with her on LinkedIn to learn more about her adventurous spirit and her gift for bringing people together, finding the diamond in the rough, no matter where she sits.
---
About Sarah:
In my work with coaching clients, I guide people to improve their communication using storytelling as the foundation of our work together. What I’ve realized over years of coaching and podcasting is that the majority of people don’t realize the impact of the stories they share - on their internal messages, and on the people they’re sharing them with.
My work with leaders and people who aspire to be leaders follows a similar path to the interviews on my podcast, uncovering pivotal moments in their lives and learning how to share them to connect more authentically with others, to make their presentations and speaking more engaging, to reveal patterns that have kept them stuck or moved them forward, and to improve their relationships at work and at home.
The audiobook, Your Stories Don’t Define You, How You Tell Them Will is now available!
Included with your purchase are two bonus tracks, songs recorded by Sarah's band, Spare Change, in her living room in Montana.
Previous Episode
154: What Can We Say, What Questions Can We Ask to Help Us Understand Each Other?
Desiree Adaway is no stranger to being the only black person in a room, or even in an entire community.
At 16, while skipping class, she saw an ad in the back of a magazine about exchange student programs and applied, signing her mother’s name on the application, the passport application, and all other necessary documents.
She was accepted into the program, but had to decline the invitation because she knew her mother couldn’t afford it. The program administrator found a sponsor, and Desiree started packing - before ever talking to her mother.
Desiree didn’t want to go to Germany. She felt a deep need to go, like she would suffocate if she didn’t go.
Arriving in Germany, she was placed with a host family in a tiny town where she was the only person with dark brown skin within more than a 500 mile radius. Her peers touched her skin and hair, stared at her, she felt like an animal at the zoo. And that was only the beginning.
Throughout school and career, she had many of these experiences, including being the only black person at board meetings, management team events. She lost track of the number of times strangers have reached out without hesitation, much less asking to touch her hair, her skin, one woman at a market hugged her as if she had no ownership of her own body. People have had an outrageous sense of entitlement to touch her. This may not seem like a big deal, but when you put this entitlement into the context of the history of the enslavement of dark skinned people, you might begin to understand.
This part of her story particularly resonated with me because of my experiences as a pregnant woman. Strangers would randomly reach out to touch my belly - and I know this is a common experience during pregnancy. It’s absurd.
Our conversation here is rich with experiences, stories to open eyes to the many different ways racism is experienced in a variety of environments.
The highlight for me was when I asked Desiree about a positive experience when a white person acknowledged racism, acknowledged the beauty of diversity as opposed to pretending to be “color blind.”
She said that her business partner, early in their relationship, pulled her aside and said these words:
One day my whiteness will betray me and I’m going to make a mistake. What will we do to move through that? The extraordinary thing about how Desiree told me this is that she turned it around and applied that sentiment to herself. She acknowledged that at some point she will fall into that trap as well, potentially with gender identity issues and other parts of humanity that she’s unfamiliar.
If we want to address inequity and racism, we must acknowledge it as it exists for those who experience it.
If you’re ready to take action as a human, you don’t have to make huge gestures. You must notice when micro-aggressions happen, and if you miss it and someone points it out to you, do not dismiss the concern. Ask about it, find out why it’s so insulting, demeaning, why the action or words are symbols of racism and bigotry.
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Desiree Adaway is a consultant, trainer, coach and speaker building resilient, equitable, and inclusive organizations. She holds a vision for people’s lives, workplaces and communities until they can hold it for themselves. Learn more by visiting her website, connect with her on LinkedIn, and be sure to follow her on your favorite social media platforms: Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.
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About Sarah:
In my work with coaching clients, I guide people to improve their communication using storytelling as the foundation of our work together. What I’ve realized over years of coaching and podcasting is that the majority of people don’t realize the impact of the stories they share - on their internal messages, and on the people they’re sharing them with.
My work with leaders and people who aspire to be leaders follows a similar path to the interviews on my podcast, uncovering pivotal moments in their lives and learning how to share them to connect more authentically with others, to make their presentations and speaking more engaging, to reveal patterns that have kept them stuck or moved them forward, and to improve their relationships at work and at home.
The audiobook, Your Stories Don’t Define You, How You Tell Them Will is now available!
Included with your purchase are two bonus tracks, songs recorded by Sarah's band, Spare Change, in her living room in Montana.
Next Episode
156: Our Experiences Create Our Identity, How We Talk About Them Shapes Our Future
Anna Cley was an outstanding student. And then she was a rocket scientist... and then she became an opera singer...
Her stepfather gave her the nudge she needed when she was miserable in her job as a scientist with the French Centre National D’Etudes Spatiales (CNES), France's equivalent to the USA's NASA. He told her that she could do anything she really wanted to do, he gave her the permission she needed to completely switch gears and follow her heart.
The idea of being a rocket scientist interested her because of her childhood infatuation with all things space, the endless nature and mystery of the cosmos. Going to work in the industry nearly ruined that infatuation, removing so much of the beauty of exploration and putting it into numbers and measurements, in small compartments in a tiny office with a desk and computer.
At 23, she was "old" to begin a career in opera, but she has an unusual range and an extraordinary presence.
I love the image she created for me with her story of pulling the box of her scores (sheet music) out of the closet after leaving her job. I could just imagine her pulling out the first piece she would sing to warm up her voice after more than four years, like a long-awaited reunion with a dear friend.
Anna's adventurous spirit has taken her all over the world, and her compassion inspired her to create a non-profit called Vocalise, guiding victims of abuse to use their voices to release the trauma stored in their hearts and bodies.
Our conversation was enlightening, fascinating, and full of "ah ha" moments. Enjoy!
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Anna Cley
From rocket science to opera... Transformational Artist Performance & Leadership Specialist Humanitarian Visit Anna's website, get ready for her book launch next year, follow her on YouTube and Instagram, and connect with her on LinkedIn to learn more.Her album "opera en code"was released in July, 2020 on all digital platforms. Here's a place to start to listen to this musical creation.
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About Sarah:
In my work with coaching clients, I guide people to improve their communication using storytelling as the foundation of our work together. What I’ve realized over years of coaching and podcasting is that the majority of people don’t realize the impact of the stories they share - on their internal messages, and on the people they’re sharing them with.
My work with leaders and people who aspire to be leaders follows a similar path to the interviews on my podcast, uncovering pivotal moments in their lives and learning how to share them to connect more authentically with others, to make their presentations and speaking more engaging, to reveal patterns that have kept them stuck or moved them forward, and to improve their relationships at work and at home.
The audiobook, Your Stories Don’t Define You, How You Tell Them Will is now available!
Included with your purchase are two bonus tracks, songs recorded by Sarah's band, Spare Change, in her living room in Montana.
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