Now vs. 3 months ago

I have to try to explain this - but how? How all the little things in the last three months have compounded. This isn’t a business post - it’s a personal one. How it’s been 6 years since my last luncheon. How it took me years to detox from that. How it took three months - once I decided to do it - for the little things to add up.

I can’t possibly dismiss what six years (!) of healing can do. That’s a book. But I can try to share what three months’ difference looks like once you “decide.”

Decide isn’t the word. More like a solidness, a knowing, a quiet little “OK.” For years I had been sad about giving up my magazine and luncheons. I gave them up for many reasons - but to summarize it? For peace, for autonomy, for doing whatever I wanted without being dimmed - things you don’t see until you SEE.

But then - the three months: Booking the luncheon date was first.

I had BOOKED OTHER DATES - over the last 6 years and… canceled them. I just wasn’t ready.

What made me ready now?

It was this - sitting on my couch in October when Tim came home from hunting AGLOW with his stories. A bobcat! Three deer! An eagle! He had MADE himself a great day by going and DOING it. By not sitting on the couch. His joy was contagious.

And I thought, why am I NOT doing what makes me happy?

I called the venue. I stood in the empty ballroom (again) and listened to my heart after all those cancellations - it said “YES.”

I asked a few friends to sponsor - they said YES. I broadened my circle and asked acquaintances - they said YES.

Then… I remember sitting in the TC Library in a terror over having to send my first email to a “stranger” - would they sponsor? It was a biz I admired and felt was the perfect fit. The woman had been delightful in our few interactions.

The answer? NO.

I was shaken. Truly, I thought it would be an easy yes. For about a good hour there, it almost derailed me. I was that fragile in that moment. My first formal pitch to a new person in a long time. But I had gotten LOTS of nos in my career, years and years of them!

Why did this hurt like this?

That’s when it hit me - how much this event represented. The luncheon was the first foray back into my professional world. I was starting to rebuild some of what I had lost. How bad did I want this? Bad enough for it to hurt.

So I went nuts.

I emailed everyone and anyone that came to mind. I started collecting my nos… and my YESES. I started sitting up taller - literally that afternoon at TC Library.

That perfect “no” was a flashpoint - an inferno of feelings for things that I had lost and things that I had to rebuild: Was ONE (kind, blind) woman going to stop me?

From there, I started focusing on the tiny steps. I realized I needed to and wanted to - at last! - network. I wanted to fix my hair. I wanted to creep into a networking event in dread and leave laughing. I wanted to remember who I was when I was a part of the biz community.

Yes, Michigan Girl has done all of those things with recreational events, but this was different. A business setting. Not woods, not dirt. I had to see if I could morph back into this woman - and if I wanted to?

It was like that… the constant hesitations and re-entry points. Did I want to do this? Could I? Did I feel good doing this? I steered with precision. If it didn’t feel good, I didn’t go forth.

“Good” wasn’t about ease, though. More like - was the angst worth it? Going to a networking event and feeling like I was straight out of the woods (I was lol) - and realizing that was ok. The real me, it turned out, kept showing up in any setting.

And the actual TELLING. The confidence to SAY it. I mean that was easy - I was excited - but it was something else. Watching it land, seeing how I felt.

And at home - those pink chairs sat in our living room for a month - us walking around them (PICTURED) - in the way because I wanted to keep this reminder in front of me. That I was doing things differently this time.

Then, I would practice talking and sitting in the chairs, showing my boys - what do you think? “Good, Mom!” Or “Again?” And laughing. Then, sitting with Tim at night going over if I was REALLY doing this.

“Yes,” he would say, every time. Making it real before it was real.

And it was in the doing that I became the woman running luncheons again. Three months ago, I was on the couch wondering if I should. All those tiny steps and pieces slowly reshaped me, taking away some of the hurt from the old days - and slowly revealing - who I had become in the years since.

I found that I was not going back to the luncheons. Instead I was moving toward them - something new, something mine, something very pink - in the DOING.

Kandace

Kandace Chapple, writer and founder of Michigan Girl

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I am a writer from Northern Michigan. For the last 25 years, I have hosted women’s events, published a regional women’s magazine and am always writing about life, loss and shenanigans. I am the founder of Michigan Girl, a community platform with more than 3,600 Facebook members, based in Traverse City, MI. Most of these ladies are actually fun to be around.

My work has appeared in Writer’s Digest, Motherwell, Chicken Soup for the Soul and regional publications (my fav is MyNorth!) throughout the Midwest. I also teach writing classes online for WOW Women on Writing.

I live in Northern Michigan with my husband, two sons, two Golden Retrievers and a mountain bike. Follow me on Facebook here or subscribe to this Substack - you won’t regret it.