I Thought We Were Talking About My Business

The other morning, I sat down with my coffee and asked Chatgpt what I thought was a harmless question.

"Can you explain what I do in a playful way?"

I was looking for words.

Not revelations.

Certainly not another layer of healing.

Just words.

The responses made me smile.

A lantern keeper.

An emotional archaeologist.

A librarian for lost selves.

Then something unexpected happened.

Every description made my stomach tighten, and my energy contract.

Without thinking, I wrote,

"These are too big for me to step into."

I stared at the sentence for a moment.

Too big?

What did that even mean?

They weren't inaccurate.

If anything, there was a thread of truth in each of them.

So why did my body react before my mind had an explanation?

Let’s back up to a few weeks earlier,

I'd been having a conversation with my mentor in her community container.

We'd been talking about visibility.

Or at least, that's what I thought we were talking about.

Like so many people building a business, I wanted to become more comfortable showing up online.

Going live, unscripted.

Writing more, with less edits.

Talking about what I do without rewriting every sentence ten times before I hit publish.

Marketing.

Or so I thought.

Then she reflected something back to me that I hadn't been able to see on my own.

She said I was willing to be vulnerable...

...as long as I could still control how people experienced my vulnerability.

I laughed while listening to her voice message, because she was right.

And because hearing someone point out the thing you've been carefully stepping around has a way of making you laugh and cringe at the same time.

Touché.

That conversation stayed with me.

I went to work with clearing statements, paying attention to the ones my body reacted to.

Trying to find the pain point, the medicine, the release of what was blocking me.

If I take up space, I become a target.

If people really see me, I can't hide anymore.

These weren't marketing problems.

They were protection.

As I followed those threads, they led me back to a little girl.

A little girl who cried easily.

Who thought deeply.

Who felt everything.

The little girl who once wanted to be a ballerina because her doll was and it was the most beautiful doll she'd ever seen.

My family couldn't afford ballet lessons.

I know that now.

But that isn't what I was told.

I was told I didn't have the body for ballet. That conversation became a core memory.

Looking back at photographs, I wasn't an overweight child.

I was an ordinary little girl.

I could run.

Jump.

Play.

I think what I really longed for wasn't ballet.

It was the experience of feeling at home in my body before I learned to question whether I belonged there.

For years, I've called this one of my inner child wound.

But over the last two days, something shifted.

I'm not sure it's a wound.

I think it's a relationship.

Wounds make me think there's a finish line, easier to heal.

Relationships don't work that way.

They ask something different of us.

Not,

"How do I fix this?"

But,

"How do I keep showing up?"

That feels both more overwhelming...

and somehow more hopeful.

Because I know how relationships are built.

Not through one grand gesture.

Through thousands of ordinary moments.

As all of this unfolded, another realization quietly arrived.

The playful conversation that had started this whole thing wasn't really about my business anymore.

Somewhere along the way, another question asked me to slow down and pay attention.

What do I hope people experience when they spend time /work with me?

The answer surprised me.

“She showed me something I had not noticed before, and it made all the difference.”

I sat with that sentence for a long time.

Because it wasn't describing a service.

It was describing every meaningful conversation I've ever had.

With clients.

With friends.

With my mentor.

Even with myself.

None of those conversations changed me because someone handed me the answer.

They changed me because someone noticed something I couldn't yet see.

Yesterday, words I'd written weeks earlier in that same community container. came back to me

At the time, I thought I was writing about the people I hope to serve.

Now I think I was writing to myself too.

“The people I am calling in are looking for evidence that it's safe to be human, and showing up while allowing myself to be perceived outside of my control is how I become that evidence.”

The words haven't changed.

But I have.

When I first wrote them, I thought they were about courage, to be truly vulnerable.

Today, I think they're about relationship.

Because every time I choose curiosity over performance...

Every time I publish something before it feels perfect...

Every time I ask a playful question instead of trying to have the right answer...

I'm not just building trust with the people who read my words.

I'm quietly building trust with the little girl who's been watching to see whether I'll disappear too.

Something else happened on Friday.

I drove myself out of town for the first time since rupturing my Achilles.

I drove Maya and I to our favourite greenhouse.

I took the most ridiculous selfie because I was so excited.

Later, looking at the photo, I realized something.

I wasn't trying to look wise.

I wasn't trying to look like someone who had fully healed.

I just looked...

Happy.

Silly.

Alive.

It struck me that maybe my comeback from this injury has never been about walking or driving again.

Maybe it's about something more subtle, deeper.

Healing my relationship with myself.

Getting to a place where I can run...

jump...

and twirl.

Not because my body has become perfect.

Because I've stopped giving up on it.

Because I've stopped giving up on me. A woman, in her own backyard, rediscovering that her body is not a problem to solve, but a home to live in.

I don't think this story has an ending.

Not yet.

In fact, I hope it doesn't.

Because I'm beginning to suspect that my inner child isn't waiting for me to heal her.

She's waiting to discover what kind of relationship we're going to have.

Will I listen?

Will I notice?

Will I make room for delight?

Will I keep showing up when life gets hard?

I don't know all of those answers yet.

But I know this.

Every time I write...

Every time I pay attention...

Every time I choose wonder over certainty...

I'm practicing to become someone she can spend time with.

And somehow... that feels more important than trying to fix her.

Maybe that's what this season is really teaching me.

Not how to heal.

But how to stay.

Thank you for your presence.

Always,

Juniper