While working for a company, I moved to another position within the same company for a promotion. It was exciting to switch from process management to marketing. It didn’t take long to regret the change. The person I thought I would report to went on a special project and never returned. She had such an energy that I knew I’d love working for her and learning from her. I ended up reporting to someone who would make a great coworker instead of a manager. I also discovered morale was in the basement with this department. A total shift from my previous one.

Then came the waves of nausea to take the situation to a new low. I discovered I was pregnant with number two. Instead of being excited, I was miserable. I liked the company, yet I couldn’t transfer because I hadn’t been in the new job long enough. The excitement of another baby couldn’t bring me out of the darkness of my job situation. After all, I had the nausea thing happening causing me to feel green whenever I drove to the office.

My only choice for getting out of the situation was to leave the company. I landed an interview with another company and the job sounded like it was written with me in mind. But I had a new dilemma that I had never faced before and no one else to ask. Should I tell the hiring manager I was pregnant? I researched this and asked around including a friend who worked in human resources. No one had definitive answers. I knew I couldn’t be the first dealing with this, but I couldn’t find anyone who had.

If I didn’t tell her, I felt like I was cheating her and not being truthful. If I told her, I could lose the opportunity to move to a better position and a happier situation.

I went to the company’s building and met with the manager and a colleague. They explained the position, expectations and hopes for the team. We all clicked.

Then I met with the manager in a one-on-one situation. We had a friendly conversation and she confirmed I was one of the finalists for the job. I paused. Let out deep breath. I explained to her I was in a situation and I felt the right thing to do was to tell her. So there, I told her I was three months pregnant. She responded like coworkers do when they heard of such exciting news.

That company was the last one I worked for before becoming a full-time freelancer. I landed the job and stayed with them for seven years. Interesting twist. The manager took a new job while I was on maternity leave. I returned from leave with no manager and only one colleague left behind (we had four of us when I started). That was another adventure, but one that set me on the path toward my freelance writing career.

So while I regretted accepting the promotion, it sent me on my way to eventually landing my first paid writing gig and becoming a full-time freelancer. Had I stayed with the original company, that might have never happened.

This post is an entry in the What I Learned from Adversity group writing project.

By the way, I had a third child. That was a breeze to announce to the boss as I was still with the company and it had been over three years since #2 arrived.

Stephen Hopson of Adversity University asks how people deal with adversity. The following lists ten ways I attack adversity.

1. Perseverance.

2. Do it. You stare at blank page. You can’t decide whether to accept a scary new assignment. Instead of dwelling on fears and roadblocks, do something. I recently accepted a writing assignment that scared me. Rather than worry about the beginning of the article — I just started writing what I knew and little by little, more content came in.

3. Do something tedious. Sometimes I can’t get past something or get in the right mood. Rather than wasting time, I move on to an easy and mindless task. Accomplishing the mindless task sometimes motivates me to return to what I couldn’t do before.

4. Accept things as they are. This is a biggie especially with my deafness. I know I’ll always meet a kid who makes fun of my speech or looks at me in a weird way. I’m used to it and accept that it happens. I don’t like it, but I let it go. Recently, I mustered up the courage to talk to second graders — it wasn’t their making fun of me that concerned me, but the reflection on my son.

5. Try it. I had the opportunity to write news articles five days a week for a Web site. That’s not the hard part — the hard part came in getting two original quotes from sources. This meant making lots of phone calls since not everyone checks e-mail multiple times a day and I needed these quotes before noon. Rather than thinking about the barrier of making phone calls (a tedious process through the relay service), I tried it. It didn’t work out. But I gained experience and learned from it.

6. Educate / speak up. People act the way they do because they don’t understand something. Teaching them makes a difference just like I taught the second graders about deafness. I’ve met people who thought I was a snob (among other things) because I didn’t respond or ignored them. I educated them and their thinking changed.

7. Use tools. Technology and knowledge give me the power to do things I might not have done before. Instant messenger lets me chat with family, friends and colleagues. Knowledge such as I know I can’t lipread from far away — so I sit in the right place to ensure I can follow the speaker. I also learned that some speakers like to walk and talk — with this knowledge, I ask speakers if they walk and change seats accordingly.

8. Find the heart of the problem. Many of us argue with others and that argument slowly moves further and further away from the real issue. If this happens, I stop and return to the heart of the problem.

9. Practice. I’ve always been determined to show that I am just as good as anyone else whether it’s sports, school or work. Practicing helps a person improve. This entry on creativity shows how lack of practice hurts.

10. Honesty. If I discover that I can’t do something well enough after trying, I face it rather than fake it. I’d rather admit my fault than turn doing something subpar.