The Wrestle That Became A Reckoning
Grief, Calling & What Comes Next
What Made Sense
There's a shift happening in the work I do.
For the last few years, I've devoted much of my life outside of work to studying grief, trauma, and the way we show up after the events that completely upend us. I became certified. I coached. I wrote. I spoke. I built a business around helping people navigate the hardest seasons of their lives.
It made sense.
Joe and I built a lighting and energy business together. His death is ultimately what closed it. I didn't leave contracting because I'd always known it wasn't for me, I left because the life we'd built around it ended, and I had to figure out what came next without him.
Somewhere along the way, I began believing that my pain was the purpose of my calling. That because I survived grief, grief itself must become the work I was meant to do, and for a season, I think it was.
I am so grateful for where that journey led me. I love the people I've met. I love the women I've had the privilege of walking beside. I also love the work I do today in my corporate work, serving clients, helping businesses grow and thrive. None of it feels wasted.
The Classroom, Not the Destination
But something has been happening quietly beneath the surface.
The more I sit in stillness with the Lord, the more I pay attention to the way my spirit responds, the more I realize something I haven't wanted to admit.
I don't think grief was ever the destination - I think it was the classroom. There's a difference.
We often believe that because we survived something, we're supposed to build our entire life's work around helping others survive the same thing. That's absolutely true for some people. I'm learning it isn't true for everyone.
This has been a fight against my own flesh.
I wanted other widows and trauma survivors to know there is life after devastation. I wanted them to know healing is possible. Somewhere in that desire, I quietly started believing that if I ever stopped centering my work around grief, I would somehow be leaving grieving people behind. As though changing the direction of my growing business meant changing the posture of my heart.
I don't think that's true anymore.
What I've had to learn is that our hearts are often terrible preachers. When fear is loud, we have to preach truth back to ourselves. We have to remind ourselves of what Scripture has been teaching us all along instead of letting guilt become the loudest voice in the room.
The deeper question underneath all of this has never really been about business, it's been about stewardship.
What do I do with everything God has given me?
What happens to what I learned through losing Joe if I don't build a business around it?
What happens to the widows who still need someone to sit across from them?
What happens to the creators who know God has asked them to build something (maybe even out of their own pain) but don't know how to steward it well?
For a long time I thought those were all competing questions. Now I'm beginning to realize they never were meant to be in competition.
What I Actually Love
Looking back, I don't know that I was trying to build a grief and trauma coaching business. I think I was trying to make sure Joe's death wasn't wasted, and for what it’s worth, sharing my story and hearing so many others stories has brought immense healing to me…and I’d like to think that something in my story has helped others along the way too.
Those aren't the same thing though: building a business, and making sure the pain of my life isn’t wasted.
Somewhere inside me was this quiet belief that if enough women found hope... if enough people healed... if enough lives were changed because I talked about grief… if I shared my trauma… maybe somehow his death would carry purpose. Maybe redemption would become visible. But redemption has never been something I was responsible for producing.
That's God's work. Not mine.
God has been so gracious through all of this.
Looking back, I can see the subtle invitations He's been giving me for years. The conversations that energized me. The work that came naturally. The things people consistently sought me out for, and continue to do so every single day.
If I'm honest, I fought Him. I kept wishing He'd make it unmistakably obvious. Hit me upside the head. Close every other door.
Instead, in His kindness, He simply kept inviting me forward.
Not forcing.
Not shaming.
Just waiting.
Last week I sat with one friend over coffee, then another over dinner, and another over Zoom. As I talked through everything out loud, something finally surfaced. I don't have to build my business around widowhood in order to faithfully love widows. That realization felt like someone opened a window, and I could finally breathe again.
I can still sit with the woman whose husband just died. I’m good at sitting in the hard with people.
I can meet her for coffee. I’m good at listening.
I can help her find support. I’m resourceful.
I can answer the phone, and be a shoulder to lean on.
I can use what I've learned whenever God places someone in front of me. Because that serves widows well.
Serving people in grief doesn't have to be my business for it to remain part of my calling. That was the exhale.
Because underneath all of this, I've also been discovering something else. I'm a creator by nature. Not just someone who likes ideas. Someone whose mind naturally organizes chaos.
Whether someone hands me a business idea, a rough manuscript, a spreadsheet, or the tangled story of their life, my brain immediately starts putting pieces together.
I see patterns.
I see systems.
I see what doesn't fit, and pieces that might be missing.
I love helping people move from confusion to clarity.
I love taking the overwhelming and making it understandable.
I love helping people build from ideas, and God winks and brain dumps, and verbal process sessions, and the list goes on and on...
For years, I thought I had to choose between my business background and everything grief taught me.
Between spreadsheets and stories.
Between finance and faith.
Between structure and healing.
Now I'm beginning to wonder if God never intended me to choose. Maybe He was preparing all of it. Maybe the corporate finance background, the years of building a business with Joe, the bookkeeping work I still genuinely enjoy, the coaching, the trauma training, the countless conversations with people rebuilding their lives after unimaginable loss...maybe they were never separate chapters, maybe they were always becoming one story.
Taking the First Step
The struggle now isn't whether I have gifts. The struggle is believing that using the gifts I naturally enjoy isn't somehow selfish.
As Christians, we don't always know what to do with ambition.
Is it pride?
Is it stewardship?
Is building something meaningful an act of faith, or an act of self?
Those are questions I'm still carrying. I don't have neat answers. Thank goodness I don’t believe we have to have neat answers to move forward.
What I do know is this: If I continue walking a path God isn't asking me to walk simply because other people expect me to stay there, or because I feel guilty leaving it, I'm not actually being faithful…I'm just being afraid. And if I stay in a lane that was never mine to occupy long-term, maybe I'm also standing in the way of someone else who was beautifully created to serve there. Oof.
I've been quietly stepping back from being known as "the grief and trauma person." That step isn't costless. Even when something is right, it can still carry grief. I think that's worth saying out loud.
That's what obedience feels like sometimes.
Not certainty.
Not confidence.
Just finally becoming honest about the thing you've known for a long time.
The wrestle didn't begin when I started changing my business. The reckoning began when I finally stopped arguing with what I think God had been gently whispering all along.
I don't know exactly what this next season will become.
I just know I can't keep pretending the old one still fits.
So here I am, taking the first step. I hope you’ll stay with me on this journey.
