Finding the Courage to Call It
What it takes to leave behind a hard-won professional identity
News & Reviews Magazine
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The piece you’re reading now is by Katrina Marson. Katrina is a lawyer, author, and speaker. She worked in the criminal justice system, particularly in sexual offences, for a decade before resigning to pursue sex education advocacy and research full time. She is a Churchill Fellow, and her first book, Legitimate Sexpectations: The power of sex-ed, was published in 2022.
For years my professional identity has accompanied me into every room, sometimes entering before I do. People are fascinated by criminal lawyers. They have a morbid curiosity about the worst things people do to each other, there’s the theatre of wigs and robes and cross-examination, and the meaningful principles like ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’. I get it. I’m the one who rushed to join the profession as soon as I graduated.
I confess my ego enjoys impressing people with the title. The work is important and court advocacy is an intellectual and skillful enterprise that takes a particular kind of mettle.
I spent years pursuing that skill and cultivating that mettle, and people respected me for it—loved ones, colleagues, and strangers alike. I also cared deeply about the work, and the people whose experiences I became responsible for. The system was unforgiving and I was a kind of custodian. My career was one of service and it fused to my identity. I weathered the vicarious trauma, the crippling anxiety, the not-infrequent public humiliation, the long hours and lost weekends, as I climbed the ladder in front of me. This was what everyone—myself included—expected I would do.
And then I quit.
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