What Planning a Celebration of Life Taught Me About Purpose and Career Alignment

When Loss Leads to Unexpected Lessons

On July 11th, 2025, I received a call unlike any other I’d received in almost eight years. Someone I loved was suddenly brain dead. The deep sadness and heart-wrenching pain of that moment felt familiar — the same shock I’d felt when my stepmother collapsed at a dinner party in November 2017 and never recovered.

This time, it was a beautiful man named Ajit — someone I’d come to know well over the last five years while designing multiple rooms in his home. Over time, I grew to appreciate his humor, his immense kindness, and his incredible stories from a lifetime of travels and experiences. He was a client, a friend, and someone I considered family. Even now, it brings me to tears thinking about his passing and the loss of such a remarkable human being.

But this story takes a happier turn, so stay with me.

A few days after his passing, his wife — who I also consider family — asked me to coordinate his Celebration of Life. She wanted it to be a party in their garden, filled with family, friends, laughter, and good memories. She knew with my eye for design, that I’d create something beautiful, honoring Ajit’s appreciation for detail and understated elegance. He was the kind of man who, when I recommended a high-end design element, would say, “It wasn’t necessary, but I really like it.” He didn’t need luxury, but he always appreciated beauty.

I was deeply honored to be asked. I knew I could deliver an event worthy of him — and at first, I thought of it as a moderately challenging side project. But what began as a 50-person dinner quickly became a 115-person, wedding-style weekend celebration! My original $30,000 budget thoughts doubled and then kept climbing as we added more details — and within weeks, I found myself running a full-scale event production.

The celebration took place just two months after his passing — a near-impossible timeframe. There was a Friday night dinner for 40, a Saturday garden event for 115, and a Sunday brunch for 40 more. There were 110 custom gift bags, handmade chocolate elephants, personalized bookmarks, custom event pens, seed paper for memory planting, custom napkins and hand towels, floral arrangements, tents, chairs, a 14 page party rental order, AV systems, DJs, photographers, a film crew and my favorite, luxury portable toilets with AC and running water! On the big event night, 26 staff members were working across catering, AV, and valet to bring it all to life.

And somehow, it all came together perfectly.

The Lessons in All of It

This experience reminded me that our skills are often more transferable than we realize. We typically see our careers within a box, our skills only making us successful in the job title or industry we are currently in. Often, self-doubt or lack of confidence prevent us from seeing the bigger opportunities that the world has for us. What I have learned in my multiple career “pivots” over the last 6 years is that our skills transfer much more widely that we could ever imagine!

Event planning and interior design, for example, share a surprising number of parallels — organization, spatial awareness, vendor coordination, deadline management, budgeting, and of course, a keen eye for aesthetics. Both require leadership, decision-making, and an ability to hold space for emotion and meaning. Both are about creating an experience — one that stays with people long after it’s over.

But the deeper takeaway for me wasn’t about discovering a new business path.

A Final Reflection

After this event, several guests approached me to ask if I’d consider planning events for them too — and while I was flattered, that’s not the direction I’m heading. What this experience reinforced for me is that my true calling lies in helping ambitious women transfer their skills — the ones they’ve spent years building — into something more purposeful.

I’m not moving into event planning; I’m staying exactly where I belong — coaching women who are ready to design lives that feel deeply aligned, fulfilling, and true to who they are. Because sometimes, life’s detours aren’t meant to redirect us — they’re meant to remind us of the foundation we’ve already built.

If you’re an ambitious woman ready to discover how to transfer your skills into a career that feels more aligned with who you are today, click here to schedule a call and explore how my life coaching approach can help.

~xo Jeanne

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