Faith Jennings: Reining in

The moment everything shifted

“You’re always working. You are always on your phone. I never get to talk to you. You are always telling me you’re busy.”

It’s every parent’s nightmare hearing those words from your kid. For Faith Jennings and her husband, it stopped them in their tracks. Both had demanding senior executive roles. Both were exhausted. And their 16-year-old daughter was telling them a truth they’d been avoiding: Their family was breaking under the weight of two high-powered careers.

So, 18 months ago, they sat down with spreadsheets and hard questions. He’d been at his healthcare organization for 13 years; she’d been at Cisco less than two. They ran retirement scenarios. The mortgage would still get paid. Their daughter would get what she needed.

The family was living in survival mode. Takeout dinners. Rushed conversations. A home functioning on fumes. Faith describes that period as trying to claw her way through the week, chasing the brief exhale of a weekend before being thrown back onto the hamster wheel every Monday.

She had spent years believing the 1980s supermom myth that you can have all the things, just not all at the same time. But understanding the myth did not make the decision any easier.

A career built on adrenaline

Faith had worked full-time since her early twenties and built exactly the career she envisioned. She entered the workforce at Sky News and AP TV, a “sink or swim environment” that toughened her early. She thrived on it: “At least one deadline per hour for 12 hours straight definitely gets your adrenaline going.”

She moved into PR agencies, discovered her passion for aviation with her first Boeing client, and eventually rose to senior roles in aerospace and tech. She became a respected leader and a fixture in her industry — but the cost was exhaustion.

Walking away from a senior communications role at 54 felt like career self-sabotage. “There’s a point at which you’re not hireable anymore. You’re experienced, knowledgeable, seasoned, but also more expensive.”

Still, staying was doing damage. Last July, she negotiated her exit. The relief was real. So was the loss of identity.

A new center of gravity

Faith now manages the day-to-day rhythm of home: school pickups, errands, cooking most nights. Her husband’s job recently expanded, but he’s far less stressed because the infrastructure at home no longer collapses daily.

When Faith asked her daughter how life feels now, the answer came fast: “Much better, less stressful.”

What she’s living through isn’t a pivot but a transition. She’s watching her daughter move through 11th grade, then 12th, then beyond — each step a possible signal for what comes next, including whether she feels the pull to return to work in some capacity.

Rediscovering the thing that steadies her

The unexpected gift in this transition has been horses. Faith has loved riding since age 5, spending breaks on a friend’s family farm in the English countryside. Those ponies gave her autonomy early: no phones, no supervision, just her and the horse solving problems in real time.

Growing up in London, horses felt like someone else’s dream. Even when she could afford one later in life, time made it impossible. Now she rides three or four days a week. At 55, she bought her first horse. She’s training him, bringing the same curious intensity she once applied to aerospace systems.

She describes riding as “active yoga,” the only thing that forces her fully into the present. “Spending time with horses centers me and fills me up with joy at the molecular level.”

That presence has reshaped her energy. She says she’s always been intense — a quality that served her career but strained her family. Time in the stables has modulated that intensity in ways everyone at home feels.

She’s found a new community too: women in their fifties and sixties who’ve also carved out space for this passion after long careers. “It’s been wonderful to really form those new friendships.”

Finally putting something down

She misses the brilliant colleagues, the intellectual challenge of translating complex systems into compelling stories. But she doesn’t miss the crises, the politics, the weekends lost to work, the 12-to-14 hour days.

What Faith wants other women to understand is that stepping back wasn’t about permission to stop striving. It was about acknowledging that success built on survival mode is still just survival mode. “You can’t control what you can’t control and you can’t control the universe. And that’s been very freeing.”

Four years ago, she would have laughed if someone told her this choice would feel right. But now she sees it clearly: it was one of the best decisions she’s made — for her career, for her family, and for herself.

This week, she’ll be at the stables three mornings. Her daughter is in 11th grade. Consulting work comes and goes. And she is learning something new: some possibilities only appear when you finally put something down.