Way Out #2: From Praying to Get Fired to Quadrupling Her Income with Christine Bridger
Christine Bridger’s Courageous Route to a Joy-Filled, Purpose-Driven Career
You would never guess it by looking at her or her lifestyle. Christine lives in Chicago and travels around the country for client meetings and board work. She has remodeled cottages in Western Michigan, with her renovation projects appearing in national publications. She also has a successful wellness consultancy. But her start in life was a bit more modest and a lot more isolated.
Christine Bridger grew up on an isolated Nebraska farm where her playmates were cows, and her classroom was a one-room schoolhouse. In her entire school, there were only twelve students. That early scarcity bred boundless imagination: she made porcelain dolls, sewed doll clothes, and launched a Christmas Ornament business as a child. She discovered that if she wanted beauty or excitement, she’d have to create it herself. This lesson became the through-line of her life.
From Detroit Design School to the Dot-Bomb
At Detroit’s renowned College for Creative Studies, Christine’s creativity finally met structure: her grades soared, and job offers followed. Barely out of college, she landed in Los Angeles as a lead web designer. She pushed through imposter syndrome only to watch her equity evaporate in the 2001 tech crash. Homesick and humbled, she retreated to Detroit, which she refers to as her lily pad. Christine still uses the concept of the lily pad today. As she says, “anytime I make a big move, in my mindset, it's just get to the lilypad and then find your next move.”
Her lily pad eventually took her to Chicago, where she worked for big agencies like Digitas, Razorfish, and Critical Mass. Climbing to senior leadership brought prestige but little joy: endless new-business pitches, 24/7 client crises, and the creeping realization that promotions had yanked her away from hands-on making. She had a husband and two small kids, and realized she had no time for them or for much else she enjoyed.
The Breaking Point and Psychic Intervention
Christine said, “I was at a major breaking point at my last agency, which is Critical Mass. It was just too much, and I saw no way out.”
She remembers driving home in tears — “a puddle” — talking to herself out loud because no one else was there to hear her. She knew she needed a change. She tried calling friends. None answered. She tried to schedule an emergency therapy session. Nothing was available. When all else failed, she called a psychic. The psychic answered the phone and told Christine that someone or something named “Virginia” would soon be coming into her life.
The very next day, a recruiter pitched a new role that Christine would largely get to define. Her boss’s name? Virginia. Christine took the job and negotiated a four-day workweek. This was not the complete exit she’d been hoping for, but it was a step in the right direction. She defined her own role and spent the next seven years rebuilding digital capabilities inside a legacy organization: creating content, digital, social, and influencer offerings that ultimately transformed how the company generated revenue as traditional models declined. All the while, she knew that her non-negotiable exit date would be her 40th birthday.
Operation Lily Pad: Preparing to Jump
Approaching her 40th “over-the-hill” birthday, she:
Shared her goal aloud. Telling friends she was leaving corporate made it real and accountable.
Ran the numbers. She calculated the bare-minimum family budget, reduced long-term savings temporarily, and lined up a modest retainer (“the lily pad job”) to cover essentials for six months.
Parallel-played. She stood up side ventures, like her Michigan cottage renovations that she turned into Airbnbs, a gourmet market collaboration, and consulting gigs, proved that she could earn income outside a W-2.
65 Things at Once, and Quadrupling Income
On her 40th birthday trip in Provence, Christine told her husband she’d booked an HR exit meeting. Within a year her “little” consultancy had quadrupled her former executive salary. The secret:
Niche + narrative. She helps struggling health & wellness brands modernize product, positioning, and digital channels—offering a clear, premium package.
Selective YES. She now declines clients who drain energy, trusting that a better fit always follows.
Creative financing. For cottage flips she’d cold-call brands, trade national-magazine placement for donated materials, and shave six-figure costs.
Spiritual Mechanics & Mindset Hygiene
Corporate escape opened space for what she calls “mindset hygiene.” She now invests in a daily 3-mile “gratitude walk” with her husband, makes time for emergency meditations when she is feeling off, journals every day, and has quarterly sessions with intuitive advisors to keep fear in check. She jokes about sleeping with a crystal in hand, but the data are tangible: night-sweats gone, energy up, ideas flowing.
And of course, I had to ask if she’d had any failures along the way, because her path sounds so amazing. Her reply? “Literally everything that I've said has had a failure or 100 attached to it. It's not a failure. It's what lesson can you take away from it?”
Perimenopause and Letting the Data Speak
As women, a huge part of our life is hormonal. And this is part of Christine’s story as well. She described getting a startling preview of a future she didn’t want as she watched a woman about ten years older than her become “a terrible monster.” Almost overnight, her own body began changing in ways she couldn’t explain: bloating, weight gain, mood swings, night sweats, poor sleep, and hair loss. When she looked it up, every sign pointed in the same direction: perimenopause.
Like many women, she initially followed the standard path: doctor visits, hormone prescriptions, online supplements marketed to “fix” the phase. Instead of helping, things got worse. The turning point came when she worked with a neurologist who specialized in women’s health and focused not on whether her numbers were “in range,” but on what was optimal. For the first time, Christine could see her own health as data. She was used to understanding patterns thanks to her career, and now her health was making more sense.
With targeted support and adjustments informed by her own health data, her symptoms resolved, her energy returned, and she felt like herself again.
A Semi-Retired State of Flow
When asked whether she has an ultimate plan for her life, Christine doesn’t describe a fixed endpoint. She talks instead about openness, often returning to the idea of “this, or something better.” What feels clear to her is not an ending, but a continuation: consulting with small and large businesses, especially in the health and wellness space, and staying engaged through board work with people who inspire her thinking.
Creation remains central. Christine travels often, collects antiques, and is always making something special—whether culinary, clothing, or décor. She continues to restore and build spaces, including an old barn in Michigan. She describes this phase as a kind of semi-retirement: not a retreat, but a pivot toward balance, with enough structure to stay stimulated and enough openness to allow for what she hasn’t imagined yet.
Christine’s Advice for Wayfinders?
Explore and Dabble
Christine believes momentum starts with curiosity, not certainty. She intentionally pushed herself into conversations with people she didn’t already know and treated exploration as the work itself. Instead of staring at a blank future, she mapped her interests, skills, and curiosities. She calls this a “dabble map.” She used it to create definition where uncertainty felt paralyzing. As she puts it, “You just need to start talking and exploring and being open-minded.”Make It Digestible
Rather than making a dramatic leap, Christine focused on reducing fear by shrinking the goal. She calculated the smallest amount her family could live on without major disruption, temporarily de-risked by pausing savings, and found a lily pad job that provided breathing room without needing to be perfect. The shift wasn’t about comfort; it was about creating space to think clearly and move forward. “I came up with the absolute smallest amount that we could afford to live on… and that became a more digestible goal.”Mindset, Trust, and Momentum
For Christine, the real work began after leaving corporate. She learned to release fear, say no faster, and trust herself. She chose happiness over income, stopped working with people who drained her energy, and built daily rituals to stay grounded. Her most sacred practice is a three-mile gratitude walk with her husband each morning, designed to release stress, practice gratitude, and dream forward. She also listens closely to intuition and acts on ideas when they appear. “We release fear and control and trust the process.”
Follow Christine
Christine has intentionally kept a low public profile. If you’re curious to see the end result of some of what she’s built, you can explore her home and lifestyle brand:
If you’ve ever wondered whether there’s more to life - there is. Christine Bridger is living proof that with curiosity, execution, and intention, you can create a life you love.
This post is part of the 101 Ways Out series: stories of people who found the courage to exit the status quo and build a life of purpose, freedom, and joy.
