Rah rah… grow women, grow.
Let’s smash the 2% glass ceilings.
Let’s hire all the people and grow this shit. It is a new decade.
#ByeHarvey
Those are rallying cries that drive many people.
Certainly me. I’ve said them (and many others). I’ve heard them, and many others. I’ve been restored by them.
Except, it feels disingenuous and a little yucky in the face of uncertainty I’m finding. Who am I to go out there and tell people to keep at their growth. Neither economist. Nor philosopher. Not an MBA even! Imagine.
Is my entire content calendar, that speaks heavily to the growth of a woman named Kristen, now irrelevant and insensitive?
Ugh, grown up decisions are hard. But you put on your big girl panties and you make them.
I’m going to stay the fucking COVID (crash) course.
I’m old enough to know life is cyclical. (Legit. Looking into regular cosmetic enhancement old.) And when things are cyclical, there are hard, tight places that you have to squeeze through.
This piece from a woman named Martha Beck (introduced to me by a woman named Eleanor Beaton) best explains the hardNESSS of it to me. It’s brilliantly articulated. Read it! But if you need the tl;dr, here is my main take out for today.
A thing Martha Beck called ‘people soup’. Here’s the tl;dr
- Stay with me for one more metamorphosis of a butterfly analogy.
- Many people think the caterpillar turns into the body of the butterfly.
- This is inaccurate.
- The caterpillar feels the need to grow, it finds itself a safe space – aka makes a cocoon.
- It gets tea and blankies, like hygge!
- And it has an epic meltdown. (inside cocoons are liquid)
- It’s what Beaton called ‘caterpillar soup’
- Fuck yeah!
- Growth doesn’t stop. It’s happening.
- Then comes the imago. Or the growth DNA which turns gloppy ‘bug soup into a delicate, winged creature’
I know. I know. The cheese feels thick. Maybe you need to have been in a dimly lit room being told this nugget in answer to a strong woman’s fear. Or maybe you need to have read every scrap on the interwebs ever written about ‘bug soup’ (there are some THINGS. Don’t go there. Rabbithole alert.)
As a woman entrepreneur who set out to grow a significant amount this year, I’m scared. I won’t lie to ya.
Fear is human nature. It’s the blanket I want to wrap myself in as I burrow into ‘should quit all growth and just focus on having enough for prohibition toilet paper’ mode. And I do. At first.
I play it all out.
And I gotta say it’s not so bad. We still have to go to work.
We still build businesses.
Sure, bottom lines will dip a little or a lot.
But life goes on.
All things are cyclical.
Disease.
Markets.
Growth.
Advancement.
You still have to wake up, hopefully self-hygiene-ate, caffeinate, and grow.
The world is all bug-soupy now.
Out of it will come valuable imago DNA on how to navigate the world better, social distancing notwithstanding.
