As I sat with Grandmother Ayahuasca this past new moon, she asked me,

“Can you be as devoted to your partner and to your household as you are to your business?”

They say that asking a better question gets you a better answer, and this question produced a host of insights. It was very confronting.

The contrast in the comparison was immediately obvious. My devotion to my business is readily apparent; it’s my passion, my baby, my purpose. It’s the creation that I’ve nourished and grown for the most time, consistently.

I’ve held the dream of being a mother, wife, and homemaker longer, but this was a dream I let go of time after time, allowing it to come back better, if it was meant to. And I turned to business for solace, as something that felt more in my direct control.

My business, especially my client practice, is, in many ways, how I know myself.

“Can you be as devoted to your partner and to your household as you are to your business?”

This question shone into the darkness. The difference in my capacity for devotion between my personal and professional lives could not be mistaken.

A small, weak, afraid voice inside me whispered, “But I don’t want to, it’s hard,” responding to Grandmother’s inquiry.

She responded, as a wise grandmother does, gently but firmly. “Being devoted to your business was hard at first.”

She had a point. Ease of devotion to my business had come only through many years and many trials; test after test that asked, “Is this really what you want?”

In those trials, testing my devotion to my business, especially the early ones and the hardest ones, it felt easy to abandon my work. It was easy to come to the conclusion that God had other plans for me, or that I was following the wrong path, due to the lack of ease and flow in a particular moment or phase.

I didn’t understand, experientially, the value of consciously choosing to do a “hard” thing.

I learned devotion to my work in those early days through the contrast of what life was like in the absence of work that I resonated with deeply. After so many cycles of leaving and returning to my intimate work with men, I got the hint.

My partnership and my household are not so expendable to me. I am confronted with the—hard—challenge of learning devotion to these faces of my life, and upping my devotion to my personal life in general, without abandoning the pursuit.

“Can you be as devoted to your partner and to your household as you are to your business?”

I can, and recognizing…

(1) that this practice is hard right now and

(2) that it will take some time and devotion to the hard BEFORE devotion to my home feels as flowy as devotion to my business does

…is the self-compassion that I need to continue forward with resilience.

And, look, y’all, THIS IS HARD.

Never for long, but in some moments…

Like waking up this morning from a dream in which I experienced the freedom of being single again and the potential of finding another partner who is (seemingly) a better match.

That would be the easier thing, right?

But this is part of my shadow pattern, “The grass is always greener…”

It’s easy to jump, to leave. I’ve done this a lot in my life, not only with partners, but with friends, jobs, and more.

When things get hardest, that’s when it’s easiest to believe that the “right” way is to get out. And sometimes this is true. But sometimes, maybe more often, we are simply running from our shadows in these moments. Running from our lack of ability to love a hard situation.

So rather than learn to love a hard situation, we look for an easier situation.

And, again, sometimes we genuinely don’t have the capacity to learn how to love a hard situation while in it. And, sometimes, the genuinely loving thing to do is to leave.

But, more often than we hold ourselves accountable to, the call is to love more, to love the hard.

And I’m stretching my capacity to love the hard.

I’m growing my ability to contain challenge in partnership, with presence. To find devotion when the friction appears in the most intimate, least convenient, most hurtful spaces. To know that even this friction is not personal. To find love even here.

“Can you be as devoted to your partner and to your household as you are to your business?”

Thank you, Grandmother, for this question, for this call to grace, service, and greatness.

This is truly an abundant, overflowing human experience we live in. I’m grateful and humbled to be a part of it.

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