What Ancient Redwoods Taught Me About Turning Career Setbacks Into Success
How fallen giants in nature reveal the hidden power of professional transitions
This Memorial Day weekend, my boyfriend Mike and I drove north to Humboldt County for an adventure he'd dreamed about for years—walking among the ancient redwood giants. Picture standing beneath a living cathedral: trees that tower 300+ feet above you, some over 2,000 years old. The air smells like earth and eternity.🌳
I expected to be awed by their towering height. Instead, the most profound lesson came from the massive trees lying across the forest floor—and a simple $1 pamphlet that changed how I think about career setbacks forever.
The $1 Investment That Rewrote My Story About Failure
At the Founders Grove, we bought a California State Parks pamphlet for a dollar—one of the best investments I've ever made. It told the story of the Dyerville Giant, a tree that dominated the forest for 1,600 years. 😱
At 370 feet tall and weighing over a million pounds, it seemed indestructible. Until March 1991, when it finally fell.
💥 No one witnessed the crash, but a neighbor a mile away heard it and thought it was a train wreck. The impact splattered mud 15 feet up nearby trees.
But here's what completely shifted my perspective: That fallen tree—what ecologists call a "nurse log"—now feeds over 4,000 species of plants and animals. Walking through the forest, we saw massive fallen redwoods with entire groves of young trees growing directly from their trunks.
The death of the tree had become the birth of entire ecosystems.
Your "Failed" Career Move Might Be Your Greatest Asset
🛑 Stop calling your career setbacks failures. You're starving the seedlings that want to grow from them.
Every day you frame your layoff, failed venture, or career pivot as something to "get over" is another day you're missing the nutrients it's providing for what's next. 🌱
My own Dyerville Giant moment: getting laid off from Airbnb in 2020. After six years as a Global Creative Lead, when that email hit my inbox, I felt like my professional world had crashed. I spent that afternoon crying under a tree in my local park—much smaller than these ancient giants—because I had no idea who I was without that title. 🫠
But that "ending" became nourishment for everything that followed. The space it created allowed seeds that had been dormant for years to finally grow. My story coaching practice grew directly from that fallen tree. ✨
The Hidden Cost of the Wrong Story
Here's the urgent truth most career advice misses: While you're beating yourself up over what fell down, your competitors are growing from their setbacks.
When you rewrite fallen trees as nurse logs instead of failures, you:
⚡ Stop wasting energy fighting what happened
🎯 Start seeing patterns that reveal your next direction
💪 Gain confidence from recognizing your resilience
🚀 Attract opportunities aligned with who you're becoming
✨ Inspire others with your transformation story
Your career is an ecosystem. And right now, something wants to grow in the clearing your challenges created.
Three Questions to Reframe Your Forest
Right now, take a moment to step into the forest of your own life and think about a "fallen tree" you've been calling a failure. Just like those ancient redwoods taught me, let's explore with curiosity instead of judgment:
🌞 Look Up and Find Light: Redwoods can live over 2,000 years because they've learned to slow down and adapt through countless seasons of change. What if you gave yourself permission to explore your story with curiosity instead of rushing to fix anything? What becomes visible when you stop judging and start observing?
🌿 Map Your Root System: Redwood roots only go 6-12 feet deep, but they spread wide and intertwine with other trees, literally holding each other up through storms. Who showed up to support you during your difficult time? What connections and insights emerged from sharing your struggle? Your resilience grows through interdependence, not isolation.
🌱 Look for the Seedlings: In redwood forests, young trees wait dormant in the shadows for decades until a fallen giant creates an opening—then they finally get their chance to grow toward the light. What dormant dreams, skills, or ideas now have the sunlight they need to flourish? What feels exciting to explore that you never had space for before?
Your Next Chapter is Already Growing
Standing among those nurse logs covered in new life, I realized that forests are always growing, always finding new ways to reach toward light.
Your career setback isn't your origin story. It's your transformation story.
The question isn't whether you'll recover—it's whether you'll recognize the extraordinary growth happening because of what fell down.
Your next breakthrough is already taking root in your last breakdown.
Those redwoods reminded me that forests don't rush their seasons. Neither should you. Trust that even in the apparent dormancy of transition, powerful growth is happening beneath the surface.
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