Losing it (and being okay)

This month’s event was particularly special, given these strange and challenging times. This pandemic has changed our daily routines and is making us stay home and learn to live inside 24/7. Even though some routines have changed, CreativeMornings Lisbon wanted to keep our tradition alive and reunite our community, even if everyone could only join from the comfort of their own home. So, we went virtual!

Last Friday morning, we joined our first ever remote event to talk about Identity. What is your identity? What defines it? Could your job be defining your identity? To share thoughts about these and other questions, we invited Ana Luísa Silva, a scientific researcher turned IT Service Desk Agent. She had so much to share!

Ana has studied Biological Engineering, obtained a Master of Science degree in Biotechnology and pursued for a PhD in the Netherlands, which she finished in 2015. Her academic career was growing, which led her to a granted position as Postdoctoral Researcher in Lisbon in 2017. She was pursuing the standard life of an academic, reliant on grants for survival in this scientific world. That system is exactly what changed everything! In 2018, Ana wasn’t awarded another postdoctoral grant and her career was entirely diverted. With no funding, she could no longer pursue research.

As her hoped-for future was vanishing through her hands and the feeling of emptiness was surrounding her, she decided to find a psychologist. On the way to her first appointment, her heart rate started to escalate and she started to lose control of her movement. Before she knew it,  she was being taken to the hospital while living out her first panic attack. This was definitely her lowest point. She was then diagnosed with anxiety and depression disorder, which she still manages to this day. Thankfully, she adopted one strategy early on to help, the strategy of adopting cats. Ana is a proud cat lady, with four little ones living with her!

In terms of her work, Ana was first invited to be a part-time teacher in an institute far away from her home, where the salary wouldn’t even cover gas money. When she opted not to accept, it was a turning point. Instead, Ana sent her CV to Fujitsu and started working as an IT Service Desk agent in their contact center. She decided to be the best agent possible, taking advantage of all the skills and knowledge she gained in her biotechnology and academic life! Now, she’s nailing it!

Ana provides clients exceptional support on the regular and is now being trained as a Problem Manager, the next step in this new career. She is a master at repairing Outlook or recovering passwords, and we all know how challenging those can be sometimes!

These last years were not easy, as Ana undertook this major life change. The depression was especially difficult and friends were lost. “Identity changes with experiences and losses…,” she remarked. However, it was also through this process that she learned to say no, to set boundaries, to remain true to her inner self and to pursue stuff she likes and she is good at: learning more, solving problems, pushing herself!

“A job is what we do. It could not define us. What we are inside is what defines us”, she said. It is the most absolute truth! Our identity is not defined by what we do to get a salary, it is much more than that! It’s what is inside of us, in our inner self, in our hearts, I must add.

Ana Silva shared with our community her vulnerabilities, her ghosts, her life-changing experiences and her successes, always truly connected to her identity. It was an honest and truly heart-connected talk, where most of us identified with some point of her story. Particularly in these challenging times that we are all living, the world might not ever be the same, many things will probably change, but our inner self, our most intrinsic identity will survive. Don’t ever forget, “What we are inside is what defines us”. Don’t ever let go of that certainty!

Text by Ana Sousa

Photos by  Irina Konova and Sónia Ramalho