The second is about Julia. She has been a colleague and a kind of professional anchor for two years, and the Northbridge booking is only the most visible thing she has done for the practice. She has sent referrals and provided introductions and reviewed my materials with a critical eye that has made them better. She did not make a thing about the personal situation. She treated it as a logistical fact and moved on. I am grateful for that, because I did not need her to have feelings about my marriage; I needed her to do her job, and she did.
The third is about what I understand now about the kind of marriage I want.
I want the ordinary version. Not the special version where everything is resolved and no one ever defaults to an old pattern. The ordinary version where two people are paying attention to each other and correcting their defaults when they notice them and talking about their work at dinner and occasionally not talking about anything in particular. The version where my professional identity is not a complication in Daniel’s family narrative but a simple and accurate feature of our life.
That version is available now. We are living it, imperfectly and with effort, the way most real things are lived.
I am staying for it. I think it is worth staying for.
The speaker directory profile still says what it has always said: Rachel Foster, operations consultant, midsize service companies, practical process improvement. Available for workshops and speaking engagements through the Midwest Operations Alliance.