Nobody tells you that running a company can feel like a death.
Not a dramatic one. More like a slow, quiet letting go of everything you thought it was going to be. Everything you thought you were going to be inside of it.
I used to be someone things came easily to. A natural. I knew what I wanted and I moved toward it and it worked. When I started Organic Erotic, some part of me assumed it would be the same. That I'd open the doors, and people would feel what I feel about it, the beauty, the ethos, the way the objects hold something alive in them, and it would just... take off.
That the partnerships would flow. That the vision would translate immediately. That I would know, right away, exactly what it wanted to be.
I was wrong about all of it.
Not in a devastating way. But in the way that life has of being more honest with you than you'd like.
What I've come to understand is that Organic Erotic has her own pace. Her own intelligence. She unfolds on her own terms, attracts people I would never have predicted, becomes more herself with every season. And somewhere in the process of trying to build her, she started building me.
That part I didn't expect.
I used to either take over or disappear. In moments of uncertainty, I would tell people what to do, or I would step back completely and take myself out. There wasn't much in between. The space between those two things, the space where you stay, where you actually work with someone, where you hold your own perspective while staying open to theirs, that space was hard for me.
The other day, I was with Leah, rearranging the store. We went back and forth. Tried different configurations. Talked through every option. And in a moment where I would normally have either imposed my answer or handed the whole thing off, I stayed. I stayed in the uncertainty, the not-knowing, the back and forth. We built it together.
When I walk into the store now, it feels open. I can feel the beauty. It makes me want to tend to it, keep it alive, care for it more.
That's new.
Some days I still feel like I'm failing her, like I'm too slow, too unseen, too far from the version of this I imagined. There are mornings when the gap between what I dreamed and what is in front of me feels enormous. I wonder if people will ever really understand what we're offering. I wonder if I can hold out long enough for them to find us.
And then someone walks through the door and they're blown away. And I remember.
Maybe she's not behind. Maybe she's just building something that takes longer than I wanted, because what she's building isn't just a company. She's building the woman who can hold it.
I'm starting to think that's the real work.
Not the products. Not the partnerships. Not the growth metrics. But becoming someone who can stay. Who can work with the uncertainty instead of against it. Who can walk into a beautiful space she helped create and let herself feel proud.
I'm not fully there yet. But I'm closer than I was.
And maybe that's what she's been after all along.
with love,
Caroline
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