Business, becoming and birthday cake

I recently read this poem, The Turtle, by Mary Oliver:

breaks from the blue-black
skin of the water, dragging her shell
with its mossy scutes
across the shallows and through the rushes
and over the mudflats, to the uprise,
to the yellow sand,
to dig with her ungainly feet
a nest, and hunker there spewing
her white eggs down
into the darkness, and you think

of her patience, her fortitude,
her determination to complete
what she was born to do----
and then you realize a greater thing----
she doesn’t consider
what she was born to do.
She’s only filled
with an old blind wish.
It isn’t even hers but came to her
in the rain or the soft wind
which is a gate through which her life keeps walking.

She can’t see
herself apart from the rest of the world
or the world from what she must do
every spring.
Crawling up the high hill,
luminous under the sand that has packed against her skin,
she doesn’t dream
she knows
she is a part of the pond she lives in,
the tall trees are her children,
the birds that swim above her
are tied to her by an unbreakable string.

…and it got me thinking: in a business world full of speed and urgency, what if you choose a rhythm that matches you and your needs and still gets the job done?

Imagine how freeing it would be to quietly, steadily do what you were born to do. No flash, no self-doubt, just being.

I recently celebrated my birthday and I reveled in marking the time joyously, deliberately, with intention (and lots of cake) — reflecting on what parts of me had quietly, steadily grown this past year and what parts needed to let loose and celebrate.

I’m continually finding myself in a powerful phase of redefinition and I’ve realized, especially in this season of life, the value of not waiting until I feel “ready” (hot take: we’re never really ready!) to be visible...

because it’s in the showing up that we become.

With love,

Laurie