​Reader,​

When my husband got sick, I was determined not to put my business down.

For years, military life had meant that whenever there was a deployment or major disruption, my work was the thing that got sidelined, so I could focus on being a full time mom and running the show.

The same thing would happen when we moved.

It took six months to prep for the move, three months to execute it, and at least another six months to get settled into the new location.

It took up a lot of time and capacity to pack up and then rebuild every three years. And it meant that my business would be put on hold for about fifteen months.

Each move felt like I had to rebuild and try and gain momentum again. And then just as life began to feel stable, another move would appear on the horizon.

Over and over again for 22 years, my work became the thing that bent around whatever was happening in the rest of our lives.

So when my husband was diagnosed with brain cancer and our life changed almost overnight, there was a part of me that was very clear:

I was not putting my business down again.

My work mattered to me. But it also gave me something familiar in the middle of a situation where very little felt like it was in my control.

At the time, I thought the problem I needed to solve was how to keep my business going while my husband was sick.

And I made decisions from there. Those decisions affected what I invested in, what I tried to maintain, and what I treated as non-negotiable. They also affected how hard I pushed myself to keep things moving.

To top it all off, I was praised for “doing it all” and "prioritizing myself.”

Looking back now, I can see I wasn’t only trying to keep my business going. At the heart of it, I was also trying not to lose this important part of who I was to the chaos around me.

And if I had been able to see that more clearly at the time, I firmly believe I would have made different choices.

Let me be super clear – I don’t think the decisions I made were wrong per se.

But I know how I was viewing the situation affected my ability to see other options that were open to me that might have been a better fit. Options that might have been more supportive.

The old experiences were influencing how I saw what was happening in the present. And because I couldn’t see that influence clearly, I couldn’t see the whole problem clearly either.

Once you can see more, you have more room to decide what fits you right now in the present moment.

That’s the work underneath Viewfinder.

What is Viewfinder? →

For now, here’s something to sit with:

Is there a problem you’re trying to solve right now that might possibly be connected – or feel similar to – an older problem you’ve had to solve before?

P.S. Sometimes the question we think we need to answer isn’t the only question in the room that needs our attention.