I had a wonderful and very insightful conversation with a very dear friend of mine last weekend. We compared notes on our lives over the past 10 years as we were both going through very difficult times in our lives... marriage breakdown and divorce. The irony of our parallel universes were uncanny in many ways.
Our conversation was cheerful as we celebrated our successes since our respective separations and compared notes on our daughters. We touched lightly on the businesses we had each owned prior to our separation and our passion for our work. She then became sober and sadly said, "We failed at our businesses, we failed our businesses." I looked at her and saw her shoulders slump in recognition of her perceived failure. I simply responded, "We did not fail anything, our partners failed us." I went on to say that if we had not been in a relationship at the time, our businesses would have grown steadily. My ex-husband openly admitted to sabotaging my business and her ex-partner even stole money from hers. She nodded slightly and I added, with enthusiasm as the thought struck me, "can you imagine if we were with our current partners and building our businesses?!" She looked up at me and smiled, she knew exactly what I meant. She was newly wedded to an absolutely wonderful and amazingly supportive man. He is doing so much to support her in her new business and would have done the same with her previous one.
We struggled mightily to grow our businesses, support birthing mothers, and in doing so, provide for our own children, all while dealing with the adversity we received from our chosen life partners. This despite our support of them on such a level that we compromised ourselves, our companies, and even our health to do so.
The foundation for success can be a small brick of hope on which we build. Sometimes we have the wonderful support of other bricklayers and sometimes we have brick thefts even within our most trusted circle. Sadly our respective businesses did not survive the brick thieves, but we learned a great deal from our experiences. We are rebuilding in different ways, with a foundation of stronger bricks as a result of those experiences.
