This week I’ve been up north. I’m on Lake Michigan with my parents, working during the day and soaking in the waterfront each sunrise and sunset. Earlier this year it was a dream, to be able to spend an entire week right on the water. This is where my people are from, early homesteaders who made a life in the rolling hills of the north-western side of Michigan, the land of lakes. The chilly north, where the weather changes on a dime and the lake reflects dozens of moods over a week’s time.

So much has changed this year, and in my gut, I knew I needed to return here. Where I spent my childhood summers camping and exploring. To reconnect with the lake, the tall firs, and birch trees, and with myself.

In so many ways the lake reflects my experience of life. I’ve been here for a week and every single day the water is different. Some days it’s calm and grey, others choppy and bright blue. There are storms that roll through, knocking over the cairns created by strangers who walked here before me, and blowing chairs down the beach. Some days it’s a palette of calm gray on gray, and the others it’s deep turquoise. Some days I can sit out here and bask in the warmth, other days I have on three layers and a hood and I’m still chilled to the bone. This is the state of life, never the same from day to day. It’s all about how we move through the ever-changing weather, and how we re-balance ourselves.

As some of you may know, it’s been six months since I stepped down as co-owner of the UnInc. In this season, as well as others, it’s been easy for me to get trapped by a narrative that says - you are doing it wrong, something is missing in you. You have had so many endings and so many transitions in your life. I look back at the last 20 years and I see 3 business partnerships that have ended, as well as a marriage, and several really significant life-partner relationships. I see the cities I have loved and moved on from. I see the twists and turns that my career has taken. Then I look around me, and I see my parents who have been married for 50 years and still live in the same home I grew up in. They honor longevity, and I have always wanted the same thing too. But it has not been my path. And slowly I am seeing what I’m meant to learn.

I want to shift the narrative. I don’t want to buy into the idea that one path is better or more valuable than another. I don’t want to accept the idea that a long marriage or business partnership is better than a series of shorter relationships, each with its own lessons and growth. I want to honor the balancing act, and the art of transition in life. From one season to the next, from one moment in balance to a moment of falling apart. The art of accepting that a season has ended, or a relationship has irreversibly changed.

Leaving the beloved business that I built with Ben has been a massive transition to move through these past months, but I am now feeling re-balanced. I am focused on evolving my consulting business, Impact Haven. Growing my client base, supporting founders and business owners as they pivot or launch new ventures. Translating their ideas to reality, making them real through branding, websites, writing, online products and educational spaces. As time goes on I’m also reconnecting with my personal mission, which is to support other women as they take risk and step out to build their own ventures. I don’t know what the expression of that will look like next, but I’m excited to find out.

So, as I process all of this transition, I ask myself - what is true?

I am enough. And my journey is beautiful. With all of its endings and new beginnings, with all of its grief, with all of the twists and turns.

The balancing act, the resilience, the art of re-balancing after I feel tossed or toppled over by change or loss, is a beautiful gift earned through a life full of transitions.

I asked a new friend of mine recently how he finds balance in his busy days. He said that when he finishes a task or a project, he pauses and meditates. Then, when he is told, he continues on to the next thing. It resonates so much with me. Much of the last 6 months has been pausing for me. Waiting to know when to move. And in what direction. Sitting in the discomfort, processing the losses, and the fears. Wondering if and when it will feel right to share pieces of my story.

To each of you who may be facing your own next moves, questioning what’s next, I want to remind you of this. You have it. You have the ability to slow down, listen, and move when the time is right. There’s no shame in balancing, and re-balancing, as many times as you need to. It’s a gift, to learn this practice. There’s a ceremony and a beauty to re-stacking the stones on the beach after the storm, and watching the sun come out again.