As a young lawyer in the early aughts, my first months as an in-house general counsel were chaotic. The previous counsel had left abruptly weeks before I arrived, and there was no one to fill me in on the multitude of open cases and ongoing projects.

I felt lost and overwhelmed . Management didn't seem to care; everyone expected me to immediately pick up where my former counsel left off, and I was extremely stressed.

Following a meeting, I stepped back into my office, and sat there, gazing. Then, someone approached me and asked if they could enter. He was a consultant who attended the meeting, and it was the first time we met.

Placing a heart-shaped pink card on my desk, he said, "You're going to be alright. It will get better." It was (he would later tell me) a card out of a stack

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