She Lost Her Job...and Found Happiness

Once upon a time, when someone asked Dominique Browning who she was, she had a ready answer. She was the editor-in-chief of Conde Nast's House & Garden magazine. Then suddenly one Monday morning in 2007 she was told the magazine was closing and she was to pack up her office and leave.

"All of the sudden, things went very quiet. I went home and started thinking, what's happened to my life?,"  she told an audience at the New Canaan Library Thursday night. Browning, the latest speaker in the library's "Authors on Stage" series, shared the painful path she walked to find her way back to a satisfying, productive life after the devastation of that morning. She also read excerpts from her book, 'Slow Love: How I Lost My Job, Put On My Pajamas & Found Happiness.'

In addition to the end of her professional career as she had known it, Browning had recently ended a long-term relationship, her two sons recently  left home  and she'd had a health scare.  

"Before, I could always get busy," she said, as a means to avoiding what was happening in the rest of her life.  She recalled a visit to the hospital when, "The possibility of losing my life only meant I would be missing a meeting."

With the loss of not just her career and identity, but also her income, Browning found herself in a position that would soon become all too familiar to many others. She knew the first step was to take a hard look at her financial picture. While she was fortunate to have reserves, she knew that she would have to sell her large, empty- nest of a dream house in Pelham, NY, a house with which she freely admits carrying on a "demented love affair."

Recognizing small favors,  Browning now sees she was fortunate to lose her job and sell her house before the worst effects of the financial crisis hit the real estate market. She moved to Rhode Island, where she owned a summer home.

Suffering from depression, she admits that many days it was hard to get herself to do much of anything. "Women have mid-life crises in a very different way than men do," she said. "We don't buy red sports cars, we put on our pajamas."

Her way out was to, "Start moving again, slowly doing something. Something about moving slowly through the world when you're in a depression gets you going again." 

For her, that movement really began in her Rhode Island garden. She found joy and purpose in simple gardening tasks. As she explains it, she stopped thrashing, stopped fighting against what felt like a riptide that had taken control of her life. She reflected on what she was afraid of and slowly let go and let the tide carry her until she acknowledged her fears and literally moved forward. 

And she began to write. First just emails to friends, then the notes and essays that eventually became a book. 

As she began to move forward with her life, to become busy again, she recognized that she wanted to retain what she had gained from a painful experience. "People get a lot out of retreats, ashrams, etc ... but when you come out of that world it's important to practice slowing down in each and every day." For Browning that means taking time to enjoy the small pleasures of her surroundings, the simple moments. She advocates what she calls "mono-tasking," doing just one thing at a time occasionally.

Today in addition to her garden Browning tends her website and blog, slowlovelife.com. She sees it as an opportunity to continue the lessons learned and share what she discovered with others.