The Part of Your Career That Doesn’t Fit on a Résumé

There’s a part of your career you were never taught how to talk about.

Not because it’s unimportant —
but because it’s inconvenient.

It doesn’t move neatly upward.
It doesn’t come with a title.
It doesn’t fit into six bullets that start with confident verbs and end with a promotion.

It’s the part where things slowed down.
Or stalled.
Or quietly unraveled while everyone around you kept asking what you were “excited about next.”

You know the part.

Where you weren’t unemployed exactly —
but any attempt to explain what you were started to sound like a disclaimer.

That part.

That’s the part I call White Space.

And no — it’s not a gap.
It’s not a failure.
And it’s not something you can fix by “tightening the language.”

White Space is what happens when the story that used to work… stops.

When your résumé is technically accurate
and still completely dishonest.

It’s where:

• You did work that will never impress an ATS but permanently rewired how you think

• You carried responsibilities no title was willing to claim

• You survived illness, burnout, caregiving, grief, or long stretches of holding it together in public

• You kept going without momentum, recognition, or a LinkedIn headline to anchor to

It’s where you learned things no one ever asks about —
right before asking you to “walk me through your experience.”

And yet, this is the part we’re told to clean up.

Reframe it.
Position it.
Make it sound intentional in hindsight.
Deliver it confidently, preferably without revealing how much it cost you.

As if the problem is how you explain it —
and not the fact that our systems only recognize growth if it shows up on time, upward, and well-documented.

Because the most formative chapters of your career often happen off the record.

Because what looks empty from the outside
is usually full of recalibration, constraint, and deeply unmarketable wisdom.

Because you didn’t lose momentum —
you lost tolerance for pretending the old version of success still fit.

Your résumé didn’t break.

It’s just still pretending you’re your old self.

White Space is not something to “push through.”

It’s where your standards change.
Your patience thins.
Your definition of success stops being borrowed.

It’s where you realize that chasing what used to work
is not the same thing as building what actually fits —
even if the old version was easier to explain.

This newsletter isn’t here to tell you what to do next.
There is no shortage of people eager to do that for you.

It’s here to help you name where you are —
without apology, urgency, or a redemption arc you don’t believe in.

If you’re in White Space right now, you’re not behind.

You’re just in the part of the story
that doesn’t come with applause —
but changes everything anyway.

More soon.

— Sara