(photo credit: admitchell08) This is a biggie. I suspect it’s going to be my loving act for at the very least, a few days. It’s so big, in fact, that I couldn’t even write about it yesterday, although it began then.
As you know, I was clearning all weekend. And when you clearn, you make room for new wonderful things to show up. You also sometimes make room for things you would rather not have show up to show up.
I thought I'd run into all of that I was going to, and then, yesterday morning, around 1030a, I got an IM from my fabulous VA, Marie. It read: “I have some news. Can we talk this morning?”
I was on the phone with Dawn at the time, but excused myself immediately and called Marie. I had a feeling I knew what she was going to tell me, and whether I was right or wrong, she’d never sent an IM like that before, and I needed to find out what it was about.
I could tell by her voice that she needed to tell me something, and that it wasn’t easy for her. And then she said it. “Hey, I took a job offer this morning.”
All the blood rushed to my ears, and I tried to be very present as she explained her need to do something different in her career, and about the job she’d accepted, and that she’d be moving into that role, full time, in two weeks, but would be available to me beyond that if I needed her to help with the transition to someone new. Obviously I heard it all, but it was hard.
I heard myself being really gracious and saying all the right things. But given that we’ve been together for more than a decade, I actually felt a bit numb, and the small child that lives inside me was screaming really loudly.
For me, it’s hard to picture my work without her as my right hand. And so it’s hard to let her go. But the loving act? Letting her go without trying to talk her out of her decision, or downright begging her to stay. And trust me…I want to beg her.
For the past 13 years, I’ve had a lot of staff and volunteers come and go, and I’ve always believed and trusted that they knew best what they needed…and so doing the loving thing and letting go, while often inconvenient (timing wise) wasn’t difficult.
But I wasn’t ready on any level for this.
And today… a full 24 hours later, as I sat at Panera trying to draft an “ad” to help me find the person who would replace her, I cried. And I thought about the fact that I didn’t try to convince her to stay. And I wondered if that, in fact, was the most loving thing to do. I mean, wouldn’t it be, I thought, equally if not more loving to fight to have her stay? To show her through that that she’s incredibly valuable to me and I don’t want to lose her? To ask her what I could possibly do to make things different for her so that she would want to continue to run her own business, and, as part of that, continue to work with me…wouldn’t that be loving? I’d do that for an employee who was considering another offer. I’d do that for a lover who thought it might be time to move on. So why not with Marie in this context?
As I left Panera those were the thoughts swirling around me. And even as they were, my wise self knew the answer: that the most loving thing really is to trust that she knows herself and what’s best for her, and to let her go on to the next part of her journey.
And so that’s what I’m doing. Today, tomorrow, maybe for the rest of this week.
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