Whistled: A Memoir of Achievement, Betrayal, and the Search for Self-Worth

By Dawn Duhamel

A variety of traumatic personal events, including a physical assault, a home burglary, a school shooting, the layoffs of the Great Recession, and #metoo impacted Dawn Duhamel’s life. In Whistled, she shares her story, chronicling the events that shaped her.

Living under the belief that working hard always pays off, and experiencing success that proved her theory, Duhamel was unprepared when, at the age of fifty, an anonymous, contrived whistleblower complaint was filed against her, ultimately resulting in her controversial termination. Blindsided by being fired for the first time, the ensuing self-doubt suffocated her spirit until, after twenty-four months of questioning and processing, she discovered what truly mattered, and the reasons to love herself again.

Whistled narrates a story of how Duhamel found meaning in loss, hope in resiliency, and courage in vulnerability. For anyone who has been betrayed, fired, or felt discarded, this memoir is about finding your way back to your true and best self.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Sep 25, 2020
• ISBN: 9781480891784

Dawn Duhamel

Dawn Duhamel began working at the age of twelve and has spent her professional career in the world of homebuilding where she was one of the youngest sales and marketing directors in the industry. She earned high-level management responsibilities by the age of twenty-six, led top-producing teams for both the private and public sectors, and has worked for Fortune 500 corporations as well as small business owners. Duhamel and her husband have three daughters.

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Copyright © 2020 Dawn Duhamel.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by

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without the written permission of the author except in the case of

brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author

and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of

the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of

people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

Archway Publishing

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Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-4808-9179-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-9177-7 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-9178-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020913391

Archway Publishing rev. date: 09/22/2020

This book is

dedicated to every

hard-working person

who has ever been

fired, laid off, or dismissed.

May you always know that

you already have

everything you need.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

PART ONE

1 MIAMI

2 BLOOMINGTON

3 DETROIT AND DES PLAINES

4 PLEASANTON

5 DENVER AND THE DESERT

PART TWO

6 BABIES AND BIBLES

7 ESTROGEN

8 I’LL LOVE YOU UNTIL I DON’T

9 DISCOVERED

10 DESPERATE PEOPLE DO

11 DESPERATE THINGS

PART THREE

12 THE JEDI RETURNS

13 LOST

14 FOUND

15 WHISTLING

16 THE NINE (OR TEN) STEPS

EPILOGUE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

INTRODUCTION

I ’ve always been drawn to stories of athletes from remote places who, without money or sponsors, become world class champions. I’ll never tire of reading about people who lift themselves up after being left behind. I’ve poured over many books about war, not because I’m interested in the chess game of outsmarting the enemy, but because I can’t read enough about the brotherhood that develops when people are raw, scared, and in a seemingly unwinnable situation. That’s when amazing things happen. I’m in awe of people who display incredible will and recovery. I never thought of myself that way. But now I think differently.

I’ve never been on the front line of enemy engagement, but I have felt the sting of being taken down. I’m not an artist that suppressed her innate talent in favor of a law degree, but I understand what it means to have a caged heart. My story is simple. I left the small-business environment, where I had been for ten years, to return to a public entity. I had a hideous experience. Broken and depressed, I searched for happiness, unable to find it. After two years of faking it to everyone around me, I lifted my veil of shame. I decided to tell my story, embarrassing as it was, to a few people.

I received a phone call from a magazine publisher who had heard my story. She found it unbelievable. She asked me if I would share it, as a speaker, at a national women’s conference she was organizing. I wasn’t sure I could handle the emotional surge that would surely overtake me if I revealed my secrets publicly. Could I be that vulnerable? I said yes before I chickened out. I said yes because, well, it was a story that needed to be told.

A few months later I took to the stage and gave my speech, quivering as I shared details. I spoke for forty minutes. I was fierce in my declarations. I thanked everyone for listening. And then something unexpected happened. All two hundred people in the room stood up. A standing ovation. I held back the tears, but not the happiness. As I walked down the stairs and headed to my seat, I was approached by many women who said, "I thought I was the only one who felt like I was nowhere after I got fired. Thank you for making me realize I’m not alone, and that I will not be defined by someone else’s decision." That’s when I decided to write this book.

PART ONE

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1

MIAMI

I started high school a month late. My parents were looking for a change in their life, so my dad requested a transfer from Maryland, where my brother and I were born and raised, to Miami, Florida. It happened quickly, and we left behind sparkly snow-covered winters, the best blue crabs in the world, and every family member I’d ever known. In return, we found palm trees, stone crabs, and a culture struggling between an increasingly growing Cuban influence and Caucasian natives demanding that residents speak English. I was a white, preppy East Coaster dropped into a world where things called JAPS existed. I had no idea what the term meant. I had never heard of it other than as a derogatory term used in old war movies to describe someone of Japanese descent.

I heard it in the halls of Killian High School in south Miami. JAP stands for Jewish American Princess. What? A Jewish princess? Here in my school? When can I meet one? The Jewish part was just as exciting to me as the princess part—but both together? I couldn’t wait! I was disappointed to learn that JAP was just a way of classifying a Jewish girl whose parents had a lot of money and spent it lavishly on their daughter, including purchases like sports cars and rhinoplasty. Who knew? At fourteen years old, I thought every girl’s nose was the one she’d always had. I’d never met someone willing to pay money to change their child’s facial features—wouldn’t that make them sort of a cheater? Aren’t we supposed to love what God gave us, especially if we were born in his likeness? Wasn’t that what they said in church? At my high school, if you were labeled a JAP, you were rich, overconfident, and lacking in self-awareness. I thought it was such a strange way of branding, and especially perplexing considering the large population of Jewish students at my high school, all of whom used the descriptor freely.

This was my introduction to Miami, high school, and a new world order. I was outside of my white-bred bubble, and I loved it. My inquisitive nature, Catholic upbringing (is there anything not to feel guilty about?), and ability to converse with elders (I was an only child for eight years) allowed for a smooth integration with middle-class, Jewish teenagers and their families. Over time I became the entertaining gentile who everyone could relate to. As I found myself in a new school, in a new state, I knew I needed to make friends quickly. Someone encouraged me to try out for soccer, and since all the cool kids in Miami played soccer, I decided to go for it.

I had never played soccer before and somehow ended up as the goalkeeper. I was awful the first year, but I kept at it, for four straight years through embarrassing losses. The first year I played, my team was filled with state champions. I was replacing the best goaltender the school, if not the state, had ever seen. There was not a single girl in our school who wanted to be goalie, so I just kept at it. I trained with the boys. I did my best to understand how to cut off angles to the goal, when to come out from the net, when to stay back, and how to direct the defense. I refused to give up. By the time my senior year rolled around, I was named captain of the team. Because that’s how life goes, right? You work hard, you get rewarded.

During spirit week, I looked forward to preppy versus punk day, because if anyone knew what a prep dressed like, it was me! In Maryland I wouldn’t have dreamed of leaving the house without matching my belt to my hair ribbon and purse (I had a purse with interchangeable covers.) I pulled out all the preppy stops for spirit week: dressed in a navy blue blazer, grey corduroy shorts, knee-high socks, and penny loafers. Unwilling to give up what I saw as the glamour of being from the birthplace of the national anthem, I had no desire to be accepted as someone who was like everyone else. I wanted to be seen as different.

In fact, I was just beginning to play a role that would come to self-define me —the fun, new kid who was accepted without having to acquiesce to full assimilation. Four years later, when senior superlatives were announced, I was awarded Wittiest Female. I was proud. It signified I was an acclimator (I made that word up.) I was fun to be around, and I was clever-a trifecta of descriptors that I relate to even now.

When I was a junior, I decided that soccer wasn’t enough, and I tried out to be a twirler. As a kid, I was a majorette. Similar to a baton twirler, but with a bit more pomp and circumstance. During summer months, I was part of a drum and bugle corps that performed in parades. I’d twirl my baton and march through towns in Maryland with names like Crownsville, Glen Burnie, and Pasadena. After the parades were over, I’d compete against other nine-year-olds in something called basic strut, where I’d march in a square, holding my baton in a very specific way, and turn sharp corners like my life depended on it.

I wore cute uniforms when I marched in parades with the corps, basically black underwear with a red velvet jacket, a riding hat, and knee-high black boots. But for my individual competitions, I wore a one-piece sequined costume, the color of mercurochrome, and glossy white boots. I started winning awards for my strutting ability, leading to more competitions, more practices, and gobs of trophies. This was the beginning of my attraction to, and comfort with, performing. It was also the beginning of something I would come to believe for the next forty-one years. You work hard, you get rewarded. I tried out and made my high school squad. I was under Friday night lights in balmy South Florida, wearing basically a one-piece bathing suit. I didn’t have to worry about who I sat with at games, because I was performing at halftime, and sitting with my team during the game. But once football season was over, so was my social life.

I was young for my grade, with a birthday in December, and when I turned sixteen, I had just finished the first semester of my junior year in high school. I borrowed my dad’s burgundy-colored Ford Fairmont and immediately drove to the mall to get a job. Chick-fil-A was a relatively unknown vendor in the Cutler Ridge Mall in 1981, and it was there I had my first exposure to retail sales and the importance of learning how to converse with total strangers. I stood at the front of the store and offered free samples to mall pedestrians. Hi, would you like a sample? Yes ma’am, it’s free. It’s chicken. Oh, it’s pronounced Chick Fillet. You can purchase a sandwich, nuggets, or chicken salad. And we make our coleslaw fresh here every morning. It’s really delicious. They’ll never take it off the menu. I added that last part. I can hardly walk into a Chick-Fil-A now without asking them to explain why in the world they got rid of that deliciousness but now have kale salad.

Being comfortable talking to complete strangers is a skill that lasts a lifetime. You know what else is a skill? Talking about religion at work. Chick-fil-A is a Baptist organization, and the owner of our store was an avid church supporter. He had a twinge of a Southern drawl, which I think was required of all Florida Baptists in the 1980s. I was surrounded at work by many of the owner’s friends’ children. The next thing I knew, I was inside a Baptist church watching a grown man get dunked in a water tank in front of the entire congregation. Not like a dunk tank at a carnival, which I was used to seeing in Maryland (and which I secretly always wanted to be a part of), but a big, clear bathtub-kind-of-thing that you stand in with your clothes on! What?? Talk about eyes wide open. I was raised Catholic, where everyone simply repeated the exact same words every week, so this made no sense to me.

Didn’t anyone tell him he was supposed to get baptized ASAP after he was born? This is all wrong! But wait, these people are screamin’ and hollerin’ and thanking God. Why are they thanking God? This man was clearly way the hell behind schedule, according to my Catholic beliefs. I was curious, so I attended a couple of Baptist services, went clogging (don’t even ask), and carpooled into CFA with Baptists in an attempt to accept Southern fried religion as my own.

I wasn’t the only one trying to understand identity in the early 1980s. Miami had two major riots—one in May of 1980 and one in December of 1982, both fueled by white police brutality against the black community. Beyond riots, there was massive Cuban immigration into Miami, and the culture of the city was naturally changing.

My mother’s white, Czech-German parents immigrated from Europe at a young age. They learned to speak the language of their new country, and worked hard. Mom thought all immigrants should speak English as their sole language. She thought black citizens were, for the most part, dangerous. She distrusted Miami. Spanish was spoken everywhere, and oftentimes she could not find English-speaking employees in stores, which infuriated her. She would often say things like, If they can’t learn to speak our language like my parents had to, they should go back to their own country. One afternoon I told her I was going to ride my bike with my friend JP, who happened to be black. At dinner that night she told me people would talk if I hung out with a black boy. I couldn’t contain my surprise, and questioned her, demanding, Like who? We don’t know anyone here except for our next-door neighbors. And besides, what are you saying? Are you racist? No, no, of course she was not racist, just trying to save me from having other people talk about me. Um…have you met me, Mom? I wore corduroy shorts and a blazer to high school, people were already talking about me! Besides, my high school was a true melting pot of ethnicities, where, as far as I could tell, all races were accepted.

My mom’s prejudice created a chasm between us that saddened us both. My dad stayed out of our discussion, not willing to take sides with either of the two most important females in his life. My mother truly thought she needed to protect me from what would surely be social suicide. It was impossible for her to recognize that her thoughts regarding race sounded like enslavement, while her refusal to embrace Cuban immigrants because of a language barrier was nationalism at its worst. I understood why she felt like she did, but I didn’t agree. Her concern over having me hang out with a black boy, and my father’s indifference to the conversation, changed the way I saw my parents. They were no longer only two people who loved me, and taught me right from wrong. They were also two people who had their own set of opinions that didn’t match mine.

The realization that I was wired differently than my parents impacted the way I interacted with employers throughout my entire career. Just because someone was my supervisor, or older than me, didn’t mean I had to feign agreement. Pushing back on my parents with my own set of beliefs gave me courage to question established hierarchy throughout my life. This would be especially true when I felt that either a moral or ethical bridge was about to be crossed. And the corporate world handles this vastly different than a small business owner.

The summer before my senior year of high school, I was mugged. It started off innocently enough, as I decided to take a ten-mile bike ride to visit my best friend Kathy. On my way back home, I looked up to see two boys on one bike heading towards me. They were about twenty-five yards away, so I moved to the other side of the street. I didn’t want to have an awkward moment of passing by too closely. The street wasn’t very wide, and I was nervous when a car passed me, let alone another biker coming in the opposite direction. The boys moved to the other side of the street as well. That’s funny, I thought, I guess we both had the same idea! By now we were about five car lengths apart, and I could see it would be difficult for both bikes to squeeze through. I returned back to the original side of the street. They mirrored my move. It was going to be tight. Too tight. As I gripped the handlebars, the duo cleverly forced a crash. My bike, with me on it, fell to the ground. I was thinking how stupid the whole situation was, when both boys grabbed my arms to (so I thought) help me stand up.

I was grateful for their help, until I realized that as they lifted me off the ground, they simultaneously ripped off the jewelry around my neck and slid all the bracelets off my wrist, with the smooth hands of practiced thieves. One of the gold chains I wore had a charm hanging from it that was half of a circle, with the letters Be Fri on it. My friend Kathy had the other half, with the letters St End. Together the charms formed a circle that read Best Friends. It was now dangling from the hands of a boy who, like his companion, was maybe eighteen-years-old, maybe younger. My emotions were all over the place. Did I just get robbed? Do they have weapons? Am I going to get injured? Or worse?

In the meantime, where the hell did all the cars go? The street was empty. I was called back to reality when I feel a tug on my right ring finger. Oh no. Not that ring. I had decided against purchasing a high school ring, opting instead to go shopping with my mom