Fuck It. I’ll Figure It Out.

I spent twenty years trying to open the same door.

He wanted me first, but I didn't want him. Then the tables turned, I wanted him, and he didn't want me anymore. He'd be ready when I wasn't. I'd finally be ready when he wasn't.

Twenty. Fucking. Years.

At some point, you'd think one of us would've taken the hint.

Somewhere along the way, I had conditioned myself to believe that regardless of what happened in between, somehow we would end up together. It was the ending I'd already written in my head.

And life, as it tends to do, had other plans.

Gypsy came along and completely changed the course of my life. Other relationships happened. I moved forward — or at least I thought I did.

The truth is, I was very good at moving without necessarily letting go.

There's a difference.

You can change relationships. Change cities. Throw yourself into work. Find someone new. Build another business. Book a flight. You can keep yourself so fucking busy figuring out what happens next that you never have to sit still long enough to deal with what happened before.

And if there's one thing I've always been exceptionally good at, it's figuring shit out.

Fuck it. I'll figure it out.

That could've been printed on my business cards.

Hell, it could've been our family crest.

Something goes wrong?

Fuck it. I'll figure it out.

Someone needs my help?

Fuck it. I'll figure it out.

Too much on my plate?

Fuck it. I'll figure it out.

Someone disappoints me?

Bottle it up and keep going.

Conflict needs to be addressed?

Hmm. How about I avoid it until I have approximately seventeen years of resentment stored in my body and then cut you off completely?

Much better.

It worked.

Until, of course, it didn't.

I think I finally got tired of staring at the same door.

Siem Reap wasn't some dramatic movie moment where I woke up one morning, watched the sunrise over Angkor Wat and suddenly understood the meaning of life.

I wish.

It was much more gradual than that.

I journaled every day. My weekdays were for evening Yoga. Reiki on Sundays. Sound Healing on Saturdays. Meditation every morning. These healing modalities were all parts of my daily routine.

Somewhere in the midst of it all, I finally let myself feel the things I'd spent years being too busy, too independent, or too fucking stubborn to deal with.

Anger.

Rage.

Resentment.

Self-pity.

Heartbreak.

All the feelings I'd gotten very good at packing into increasingly smaller boxes and shoving somewhere out of sight.

One day, sitting alone in a café, I had to admit something I hadn't really wanted to admit.

I wasn't happy.

My life wasn't quite where I'd imagined it would be by then.

And for once, instead of distracting myself, finding another person, throwing myself into work, or booking another escape route, I stayed with it.

I started looking at my own patterns.

Not his.

Not theirs.

Mine.

There wasn't one giant breakthrough.

I just slowly learned how to breathe again.

And eventually, I realized I'd spent an absurd amount of time staring at one closed door because I'd convinced myself it was the only fucking door.

The ending.

The person.

The story.

Meanwhile, there were windows everywhere.

That's the funny thing about letting go.

Sometimes we hold onto something because we believe releasing it means admitting it didn't matter.

But it did matter.

Twenty years mattered.

The people I've loved mattered.

The things that hurt me mattered.

The versions of myself who made decisions I wouldn't make today mattered too.

Letting go didn't erase any of that.

It simply meant I stopped asking the past to become my future.

And somewhere in the middle of figuring all of this out, I started noticing something slightly irritating.

I had been doing the same shit in my business.

Of course, I had. 😂

Apparently, your baggage comes to work with you.

For years, I thought taking care of people meant taking care of them no matter the cost.

If you were part of my circle, that was it.

I was all in.

Friend. Partner. Client. Team Member. Family.

I would give and give and give.

I would say yes when I wanted to say no.

I'd tolerate things because I didn't have the energy for the conflict that saying something would create.

Then I'd resent the fact that I was doing something I'd technically agreed to do.

Healthy. 😂

And eventually, after enough resentment had accumulated?

BOOM.

I'm done.

Door closed.

Goodbye.

No difficult conversation required because by then I'd already had the entire argument with you approximately 400 times in my own head.

The problem was that I didn't magically become a different person when I opened my MacBook.

Those same patterns followed me straight into business.

I kept difficult clients because I was afraid of losing the income.

A client would ask for something outside their scope. I'd explain that it wasn't included...

...and then do it anyway.

Because, you guessed it:

Fuck it. I'll figure it out.

I've hired more than 200 VAs over the years. Some became friends.

And some of those friendships ended spectacularly badly.

I've been lied to. Betrayed. Talked about behind my back. I've had people I trusted damage relationships I'd built with clients. I've watched people learn from me, turn around and start their own thing, and somehow forget the part where friendship, loyalty, and basic human decency were supposed to come with them.

There were times it hurt the business.

There were times it hurt me.

Usually, it was both.

And for a long time, my response was still the same.

Fuck it. I'll figure it out.

Fix it.

Handle it.

Clean up the mess.

Keep everyone else moving.

Being the person who can handle everything is a dangerous little drug.

Especially when you've been that person for most of your life.

I'm the eldest.

The breadwinner.

The boss.

The fixer.

The one who knows what to do when something goes wrong.

And there is a strange kind of pride that comes with that.

People trust you.

People need you.

People say things like, “I don't know what we'd do without you.”

Which sounds lovely until you realize you've accidentally built an entire life around making sure nobody ever has to find out.

That's where my beloved little mantra gets complicated.

“Fuck it. I'll figure it out.” has carried me through a lot.

It helped me build businesses.

It helped me raise my daughter.

It helped me survive things I didn't think I was ready for.

It helped me start over.

More than once.

I don't want to get rid of that part of myself.

I like knowing I can figure things out.

What I'm learning at 40 is that knowing I can doesn't mean I always have to.

There's a big difference between being capable of carrying something and deciding that it belongs to you.

And I spent a lot of years carrying things simply because I could.

Maybe that's what boundaries are really for.

I used to think being a good friend, partner, or boss meant taking care of your people no matter what it cost you.

You're the boss.

You run the motherfucking show.

If something falls apart, you fix it.

If someone struggles, you step in.

If the client needs something, you make it happen.

If somebody you love needs you, you find a way.

Except there's a flaw in that arrangement.

Eventually, everybody learns that you are the way.

Your team doesn't learn to solve the problem because you'll solve it.

The client doesn't respect the scope because you'll bend it.

The people around you don't always learn where your limits are because you keep moving them.

And you don't learn how to communicate what you need because you've become very good at surviving without asking for it.

I know that one particularly well.

Hard conversations have never been my favorite hobby.

There have been plenty of times when my brain has had a thousand things to say, and my mouth has apparently decided we're closed for business.

So I would avoid.

Tolerate.

Overthink.

Keep going.

Until I couldn't.

I'm still learning how to do that differently.

How to say something while it's still a conversation instead of waiting until it becomes an explosion.

How to trust that disagreement doesn't automatically mean goodbye.

How to let other people take responsibility for their side of a relationship.

And yes, how to let my team take responsibility for their side of the business too.

Turns out, boundaries aren't walls you build to keep everyone out.

Sometimes, they're simply the point where you stop doing everybody else's job for them.

Business really is a relationship.

The more I think about it, the more ridiculous it seems that we pretend business is mostly strategy.

Of course, strategy matters.

Offers matter.

Systems matter.

Money matters.

Marketing matters.

But underneath all of it are people.

And people bring their shit with them.

We bring our trust issues.

Our fear of disappointing people.

Our need to be needed.

Our relationship with money.

Our inability to say no.

Our tendency to stay too long.

Our habit of avoiding difficult conversations.

Our need for control.

Our belief that if we don't do it ourselves, something terrible will happen.

Put all of that inside a business and suddenly what looks like a systems problem might be a trust problem.

What looks like a difficult-client problem might partly be a boundary problem.

What looks like a delegation problem might be an identity problem.

And what looks like “everyone depends on me” might require the slightly more uncomfortable question:

Have I taught everyone to depend on me?

Ouch.

I know.

I didn't particularly enjoy that one either.

I don't want to be indispensable anymore.

That's probably one of the biggest things that has changed for me.

For years, being needed felt like proof I was doing something right.

Now?

I don't want my team to be unable to function without me.

I don't want clients who need access to me at ridiculous hours.

I don't want to solve every single problem.

I don't want to be involved in every decision.

I don't want Willow Creatives to require my fingerprints on every single thing before it can move forward.

I want the people I work with to know how to fish, for lack of a less overused metaphor.

I want to give people the tools, trust, context, and responsibility to take care of what belongs to them.

And then I want to let them.

That's the bit I'm still practicing.

Because there will probably always be a tiny part of my brain watching someone solve a problem differently from me and whispering:

You know, you could just do this yourself.

Yes, brain.

I know.

That's rather the point.

I know I can figure it out. I just don't have to figure out everything anymore.

Maybe that's the relationship I'm trying to build with my business now.

One where I don't have to abandon myself to keep it alive.

One where saying no doesn't require three paragraphs of justification.

One where support doesn't mean handing something over and hovering three inches away.

One where other adults are allowed to be responsible for themselves.

One where a client leaving doesn't mean the whole thing is falling apart.

One where one closed door doesn't become the only door I stare at for the next twenty years.

Because I've done enough of that for one lifetime. 😂

Siem Reap taught me a lot about letting go.

But I think the biggest thing it gave me was space to recognize that I didn't have to keep forcing old stories to reach the endings I'd already written for them.

Some doors close.

Some relationships end.

Some clients leave.

Some friendships don't survive.

Some versions of ourselves get us incredibly far and still aren't meant to come with us forever.

It doesn't mean they didn't matter.

It doesn't even mean they were mistakes.

Sometimes it simply means their part in the story is finished.

And maybe growing — in life, love, and business — is learning to stop standing at the same closed door demanding that it open.

Especially when there are windows everywhere.

What are you still carrying, fixing, tolerating or trying to keep alive simply because you've convinced yourself it's your responsibility?

If this made you look at your own business a little differently, sit with that.

And if you're realizing you've built a business that relies on you to carry far too much, we're here when you're ready for support that helps you put some of it down.