It's All in the Cards: Welcome to Startup Spirituality

I've come to believe that you can learn a whole lot about spirituality from a startup.

In fact, most all of my faith at the moment stems from my journey to build a startup. (Or more specifically, my attempt to launch a cross-country RV tour in support of my app startup.)

In building a business, I embark on new territory day after day, decision after decision, and the only thing I have to hold onto is my gut, my support community, my deep seated belief in an unknown vision, and now, my oracle cards.

Isn't that what faith is all about? 

You find your way forward based on the belief that something - or someone - will guide you. You put your trust in a feeling, a belief about what good will come, and give in to it to keep going. You look for signs, lots of signs. You look to an energy-the heavens, a guru, a mantra-to direct you, to turn up when you need it most, to give you a shove, or to simply hold your hand in the dark hours. (And oh there are plenty of dark hours in entrepreneurship.)

There is also much need to believe blindly that all will be as it should be; that all will work out.

There are endless times we must turn to our community of like-minded startup starters. There are a million moments when we consult the words of those wise ones who've come before. And there is a continual looking inward, a questioning of the soul and the purpose over and over (and over!) again. 

Yes, building a startup demands spirituality.

Which kind, or what shape it takes, is up to each of us. To survive, one might turn to a preacher. One might turn to a church or an online course or a dogma or a bottle of wine. (Many, many bottles of wine.) 

For me, I'm turning to the Goddesses. Women have always served me well in finding the way and my startup mission is to serve more of them so that's where I'm choosing to start: the Goddess Guidance Oracle Cards. (Also likely the horoscopes, the truthbombs, the Instagram quotes, and the podcasts.) I'm going to consult a card each day as I build this Breast Express Tour, and this pumpspotting platform, and see where it leads. 

I'm going to give in to the startup as my spirit animal.

I'll be documenting the journey as Startup Spirituality. The act of tuning in to faith so you can turn out something magical. 

On a similar journey? Building a startup? Have a thought on spirituality? Just want to see what cards I pick? I'd love for you to join in. Hopefully you enjoy and maybe we all uncover an important thing or two. 

 

The Spin Cycle

My to do list is like the laundry: every time I think I've done it all, the day's underwear sneaks back in and foils me. 

I hate doing laundry, but every other week or so I become obsessed with conquering it, beating it back, folding and returning it all to the order of the drawers and closets. As if by getting to the end of the wire basket, all right-ness will have been restored to my house and a sense of fulfillment will settle into the air like the scent of tossed dryer sheets.

I can visualize the end goal: I've done the colors, done the kids tops and bottoms, the towels, the dresses, even the dog bed. I've given cleanliness and open floor space and good smelling pjs back to the family I love. Oh look at me, the caring mother, the accomplished homemaker, the helpful wife. Check, check, check.

The problem with that lies somewhere in the midst of the second spin cycle, however. The truth hides like a dark sock in a sea of whites. I am not those things, not hardly ever. Really I am a distracted mother, a negligent homemaker, a useless wife. 

I'm also a procrastinator, a workaholic, a true Type A, awash in an ocean of responsibility trying to cleanse and fold and sort all manners of my life. To fit them into multiple washing machines at the same time:  The marketing agency in the trusty top loader. The app company in the untested new stackable. Motherhood in the oversize, always running, always needing more soap, yet always giving back extra socks washer. And let's not forget (though we already have) the wifely duties pile, sitting outside the washers for far too long with no extra space in any machine and no one moving it up the priority list. 

My days are an orchestration of the smooth efficiency of all those machines, all those loads. I'm forever trying to perfect the composition and improve the balance and increase output. I'm trying desperately to keep up, endlessly aiming to get to a point where all those baskets - all those lists - will be empty. With every item fully cared for. With everything in it's proper place and ready to go back over someone's head or tuck into a bed. 

Getting there would bring a rare moment of stillness for me. One moment of pause without the whirring and filling back up, without the clothes and the needs and the decisions to be attended to. I think if I could get there, I might feel the order that so frequently eludes me. I might be satisfied with my accomplishments. I might even be enough. 

But always, there is that new pair of dirty underwear. The pjs from last night crumpled on the stairs. The towel from where the dog peed on the floor. Empty laundry baskets are an allusion in my life, like a sound night's sleep or an empty inbox and, yet, I'm forever seeking them. 

I'm always returning to the machines when deep down I know that the very act itself distracts me from the things I really should do, the meaningful order and accomplishment awaiting above the basement. The kids with their half-cobbled together puzzle on the floor. The strategic plan that is missing the pillar messaging. The app advertising model that if cracked, might make all the difference. 

I hear their calls but still, I hide behind those heaping baskets because it's safer. Easier on my brain. Less wrought with risk or failure. The job at hand is straightforward: wash, dry, sort, deliver. Repeat and repeat and repeat. 

If repetition is the mother of skill, and I just keep washing, then one day I might become a master entrepreneur, attentive wife, and homey mother. If I keep trying, I might just find all the answers folded somewhere in between the sheets and the sweaters. 

Dear Boobs, Thank You For The Milk

Dear boobs,

We'd like to say thank you for the milk.

And for keeping it flowing, even when we're a little under fed, under the weather, overly tired, and overly unsure about how this breastfeeding thing really works.

Thanks for working with us when we're working on those early latching days.

Thanks for knowing what to do when we really don't.

Thanks for a million reasons to sit and be still with our baby. (Even if we act like we are dying to get going, we will one day look back and treasure every second of those little sucks.)

Thanks for sticking with us. For holding on when we're stuck without a place to pump. For the extra ounce when we think we just can't stick with it one day longer.  

Thanks for nourishing both our sweet babies and our souls at the same time.

Thanks for the extra looks here and there. (And no, not the judgey ones, the second-glance-at-our-womanly-beauty ones that enable us to forget the leaking and mastitis and exhaustive 3 a.m. feeds for a moment and remember how gorgeous and healthy and sexy we are in motherhood.)

Thanks for the biology lessons. You've sure taught us a lot about mammals and made us newly consider the monkeys at the zoo and the cows on the farm field trips and pretty much every other kind of animal with a nipple.

Thanks for that little thing called the let-down. Who knew it would be our favorite part of the day?

Thanks for actually working like you are supposed to some of the time and thanks, even more, to all the lactation consultants and mamas ready nearby when you and I are just not working it out.

Thanks for not holding it against us when we have to break up.

Thank you for allowing us to be a source of strength, a soft pillow, and a center in many a storms. Thank you for being there for us so we can be there for our children.

We've been through quite the relationship throughout pregnancy and nursing and we are here to say we appreciate you, deeply.

We'll even try and remember that more often.

We'll try not to curse you so much when you spray, stop producing, and shrink more than we'd like you to. We'll remember that you are worthy of our love.

We know we don't always show you the gratitude you deserve, but on the heels of a week of giving thanks, we'd like you to know that we think making milk is pretty miraculous, and we are so very thankful for the journey and for you, our beautiful, milk-making, baby-feeding boobs.

Under the Table

Somewhere around 10:30 p.m. last summer, in the middle of a spectacular wedding, I slipped under the table. The Jerry Ross Band was doing their thing at the front of the tent, drawing out even the most apprehensive dancers, the cocktails were flowing, the bride and groom were glowing, and the night was as warm and electric as the little white lights circling the nearby trees.

It wouldn’t seem the ideal moment to lift up the table cloth and duck away but there I sat, crouched under the table, dress unzipped and pump in hand watching shoes and bare feet peek out and shift around me. There we sat, actually, me and three (sometimes even five) of my female friends. We sat almost suctioned together like the shield I had just secured and our conversation flowed as freely as my milk.

I’ve pumped in many makeshift places in the past 16 months traveling and working while still nursing my son Max but none so communal, memorable or poignant as under that table, surrounded by white cloth and women I love deeply.

Motherhood is a communal word. It’s a communal “world”. Not too far removed from other such communal worlds: Sisterhood. Womanhood. Parenthood. Brotherhood. Childhood. Hollywood(?). These societies we join by association – through event, age, circumstance or even accident. We come to them on our own, as new arrivals unfamiliar with the territory (language, customs, topography) and we navigate through the best we can. We look for road signs. We Google recommendations. We fly by the seat of our pants.

But mostly, we turn to other people. We seek traveling companions who know the way or know what we’re in for or know nothing but are willing to stick by our side. We come to a realization that we’re not the first to travel this way, nor the last, and that our time is best served tapping into the collective experience around us. While we enter these ‘hoods’ solo we become one of many. Part of the fold. We immerse ourselves into the new world and in my experience, it is precisely the others in the hood that make the journey enjoyable (manageable, possible, exciting, even exceptional).

If we are lucky, as I have been, we find ourselves sitting under a table with some of the finest community members.

We chatted about whether or not I could count hand pumping as a workout for my hand (I can) and where we picked up our fascinators (Etsy and the closet), whether we knew what they were before they were requested on Alexis’ wedding invite (nope), as at ease as if we were lying on a circle of towels on a beach. None of us seemed to be phased by the crick in our necks nor the grass on our legs nor the strangeness of the location and my pumping.

We were just us, as we’ve always been. Gathered together, supporting what one woman needs, being present. This is what our ‘hood’ had come to look like.

It didn’t start out that way. In the beginning, we were all young, at varying levels of strangers and childhood friends and acquaintances choosing to work at Camp Henry, a summer camp in Michigan. (Choosing to forgo showering and time with family and funds and any kind of decent sleep.) We were all solo travelers arriving into summer camp-hood. We spent the summers together and bit by bit, mosquito bite by bite and Three Jolly Fisherman by Rock-a-my-Soul, we started to relate.

We connected in the cabins with ease until one day, Amanda got married. And we celebrated outside the camp trees and learned we liked it. A lot. So we decided to head to Jenny’s cabin the next year. Uncertain of how it would go, or whether we would all get along, armed with a pile of magazines, a boatload of alcohol, a few tiaras, and very few places to sleep, ten of us gathered in a circle on the shores of Lime Lake and struck upon a way to take the Shores of Lake Kimball with us. We discovered that camp-hood and sisterhood and womanhood and suspended childhood were really one in the same.

Twelve years later (give or take, depending who is counting), and twelve years of summer weekends and weddings together, we found ourselves at Alexis and Andrew’s beautiful celebration, sitting there under the table. And standing by the tree holding new babies and babies with beautiful blue eyes. And observing our communal husbands standing in their own familiar circle at the barn.

We had chosen partners and cities and careers and motherhood. (Still choosing to forgo showering and time with family and funds and any kind of decent sleep.) While in some ways we’re always still traveling alone, in the ways that matter, we’re deeply connected.

We may not all have summers off or know that breast milk is warm when it comes out or work long hours in the corporate world or have a married name but we all know what it means to be one of many with this group we call the Hanks Honeys.

We know the value of our hood.

And we know that when someone says they need to pump somewhere other than a port-a-potty that the best idea is to go under the table and have husbands go for drinks while we chat.

Cheers to AR and AR, the Hanks Honeys, and all those embracing their ‘hood’s.