Lane Changer - Pam Hudak, living on a multi-lane highway

two lane changers on a patio

There are lane changers and there are Lane Changers. My friend, Pam Hudak, is definitely the latter.

Pam compares navigating her four decades of adulthood to being on the multilane highway she was recently on in Buenos Aires. I gather she means it’s been a little chaotic and a lot exhilarating. Let’s take a look.

1st lane - Pam, the physiotherapist

Like all of us who grew up in the 1970s, Pam saw Beau Bridges’ first major film, The Other Side of the Mountain, a docudrama about teen ski racing champ, Jill Kinmont, who went through extensive rehab after being paralyzed in a ski accident. That movie inspired Pam to study physiotherapy at the University of Saskatchewan, five hours from her hometown of Estevan. During her 4th year, she took a break from formal school for a four month trip to India with Crossroads International where she volunteered at a school for physically disabled children. It was the first sign that physio may not be her forever-path.

As a physiotherapist in Winnipeg, Pam helped people with hand injuries and with burns. But while she loved the intellectual challenge, her heart wasn’t in the practice.

2nd lane - Pam, the clinical epidemiologist and bio-statistician

In the late ‘80s, Pam began a Masters in the clinical epidemiology program at McMaster in Hamilton. I was doing my undergrad there too, and when I asked whether she and I might have been sitting at adjacent tables at Mac’s pubs - the Rat or the John - she shook her head. Whatever Pam’s doing, she works her ass off (her words) to become expert; Mac was no exception - she left the goofing off to 18 year olds like me.

No surprise then that in her early 30s she became the research co-ordinator in the new Hand Program at Toronto Western Hospital, bringing her unique skillset to a world of medical doctors and hand therapists. Before long, she added PhD studies to her full-time work.

With a PhD and post-doctoral work in conversational analysis, she became an Assistant Professor at Toronto’s St. Mike’s hospital. She studied differences in the way medical doctors talk, depending on the race of the patient. Combining conversational analysis with the medical world was new and therefore vulnerable to funding cuts. When the economy crashed in 2008, Pam knew she’d have to shift her research focus if she was going to continue to get financial support.

But what really shifted were her priorities. You see, it was around that time that, in her early 40s, she met Mike, the man who would become her husband. She was tired of the grind of academia anyway so she negotiated an exit from the hospital. Buoyed by Mike’s encouragement, something that’s never wavered since, she knew it was time for something new.

3rd lane - Pam, the self-employed mediator

Using her severance package, she began deep-diving into the new-to-her area of mediation. She’d seen some conflict in the work she was doing and was keen to see if she could apply her analytical brain to helping people resolve their interpersonal differences.

Pam was completing an internship with St. Stephens Community Mediation program (now The Neighbourhood Group) when I took their week-long course. I didn’t realize then she was new to the field as I was to law, but I think we saw in each other a bit of ourselves, and hence formed a friendship. We agree the flexibility that having no dependents provides - having other mouths to feed would surely require many more shoulder checks before either of us moved into that new lane or any of our subsequent lanes.

Self-employed mediator is a constant game of hustling for work. Pam did it for 12 years. Whether helping workplaces sort out issues or communities, like some of my co-op clients, work through the messy human drama that results from people living together, Pam and her business partners brought their skills, compassion, and common sense to bear, leaving groups better able to be together than they were before.

Like most of us, Pam found the move online during COVID19 challenging and for that reason and others, she began looking around for something new.

4th lane - Pam, of Snail Interiors   

For decades, Pam has helped people organize their stuff. First under the name Closet Confidential, then with a partner as Jade & Indigo, and now with her new brand, Snail Interiors, Pam brings her clients a “work with what you have” philosophy of home design.

Pam helped me ready my main house for tenants in 2022 where her mediation skills helped me through the emotions that came up related to my stuff. I also saw her scientific brain analyze the relationship of things to each other. And then there’s her innate sense of how to shift things just a bit to create a space both more usable and more attractive.

These days, business development is about Instagram Reels, SEO, and algorithms, a preoccupation that both frustrates and challenges Pam. I’ve no doubt whatsoever that Pam will master it all and achieve success with Snail Interiors just as she has in lanes 1 through 3. Check her business out here: https://www.snailinteriors.ca/

Closing reflections

Financially, Pam’s not quite where she’d hoped to be at this stage in life. She and Mike live mortgage-free in the condo she bought more than twenty years ago in downtown Toronto. She receives a small hospital pension and she knows Snail will pick up. But does she have regrets about choices she’s made? Nope. She sometimes misses the feeling she had at the hospital where she felt really confident in her skills, backed by her years of education. She’s got the support of the people who matter to her and she knows she’s good with people and has a good aesthetic. This too will work out.

Added bonus of the shifts? With each version of Pam, she gets closer to something real in herself. She’s learned that sometimes there are things you have to work less hard at, that break through on their own. All that feels pretty good.

Four lanes in 40 years. Will there be a fifth? Never say never, Pam said!  She’s got a lot of interests and, among other things, has always fancied going to Europe to learn to tailor a blazer. If anyone could do it, it’s her. Pam Hudak may have a PhD in medical sciences but she deserves an honorary doctorate in working hard to achieve excellence. And she gets an A+ from me in Lane Changing.

Missed previous Lane Changer profiles?

Peter Chandler, how it all began for me

Cathy Crowe, her lane is the street

Marissa Bastidas, same lane, new direction


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Lane Changer - Marissa Bastidas - same lane, new direction