There’s a version of this story where I walk away.

Where the weight of everything – a father’s cancer diagnosis, failing health of a father and mother-in-law, a son’s near-fatal accident, a business that had spread itself too thin – becomes too much, even for me. Where I decide that the most responsible thing I can do is quit and focus on my family.

I almost told that version of the story.

I’m glad I didn’t.

The Before

I spent more than 20 years in corporate advocating for myself and for the women on my team. Fighting for my place after my maternity leave, when I was one of the few women at the table. Fighting to prove that I was capable of more than what someone else had decided my ceiling was.

I did the work. And then I walked away from it. An intentional decision so that I could build something of my own.

Simply Enough started as a professional organizing business in 2016. Over the next eight years, it evolved. I became one of the first Becker Certified Professional Organizers. I found my way into decluttering coaching, then life coaching, then business coaching. I started writing for Forbes and Becoming Minimalist. I built an email list. I recorded YouTube videos. I said yes to a lot of things.

By the summer of 2024, I had been in business for a while, and I was spread thin across too many offers. I had a group coaching program that wasn’t getting traction. I had backed away from promoting my in-person services. I knew that one-on-one coaching was where I was most effective, and that focusing there would not only serve my clients best, but give me something I really wanted: the freedom to work from anywhere.

I just hadn’t committed to it yet. In the words of my coach, “I was interested but not committed.” Not yet anyway.

That’s where this story really begins.

July 23, 2024

On this day, my dad was diagnosed with cancer.

If you’ve ever heard the words cancer in a doctor’s office as I did, you know what happens to time in the days that follow. My parents and I rode home in the car in silence. We couldn’t speak. Not a single word for over two hours.  The silence was deafening. Everything felt urgent and suspended at the same time. You start doing the math: years, visits, future graduations, weddings, even great-grandchildren. You think about what you’ve said and what you haven’t said yet.

I wanted to be present. Fully present. Not tethered to a calendar full of in-person clients in Northern Virginia when my parents needed me. Not building a business that required me to be in one place when the most important people in my life might need me somewhere else.

My dad’s diagnosis made the decision I’d been avoiding.

I needed to take my own advice. I needed to simplify. And I needed to commit and stop pretending I could do it all.

I Almost Walked Away

In the weeks that followed, I did not simplify. I added. I made calls to doctors, read everything I could find about myelofibrosis, contacted specialists, drove to the Cleveland Clinic to get my dad the best care.

I questioned everything. Whether I should keep going with any of it, and I even took a break with my group coaching clients. They saw me through several difficult times, and I’m forever grateful.

Should I keep promoting my services at all? 

Was this business I had spent eight years building worth the energy it required during the hardest season of my family’s life?

I considered closing Simply Enough altogether.

Not scaling back. Not pivoting. Quitting.

Just focusing on my dad, my in-laws, and launching my son, and getting through whatever came next.

I hadn’t told many people how close I came to that decision. But I was close.

The Night Everything Fell Apart

And then, the night before Zack left for college, everything fell apart. It got worse when I didn’t think that was possible.

He and a friend went for a drive after dinner. Their last night together before leaving for school. My mom radar went off the moment they walked out the door. It was one of those feelings you can’t explain but can’t ignore. I stood in the foyer thinking I should have said “drive safe” and didn’t. I said that phrase to Zack nearly every day as he left for school.

At 11:30 PM, the phone rang. Calls at this hour are never good.

It was Zack, screaming. We’ve been in an accident. The car rolled twice. I should be dead. He said this phrase over and over again and was in complete shock. I can still see the fear in his face when they loaded him in the ambulance.

Both boys were okay, thankfully. They were very bumped and bruised. I picked glass out of Zack’s hair and feet. And we were in the hospital until 4 AM, making sure he was ok.

I should be dead.

It’s no surprise that I didn’t sleep much that night. And somehow, the next morning we got up to take him to JMU.

As I walked bleary-eyed into the bathroom. I heard it.

I was standing in my bedroom with a dad fighting cancer, Zack’s empty bedroom, and a business I wasn’t sure I believed in anymore. If ever there was a dark cloud over my life, that was it. The accumulation of it all and the uncertainty felt so heavy, but I didn’t know where to start. 

And that’s when I heard something.

Clear as day. Quiet but certain. Standing just outside our master bathroom.

See? I told you I’ve got him.

My job for Zack’s entire life was to keep him safe. But I was going to have to turn that over to someone else, and God let me know that He was the one. I’m not going to over-explain that moment. If you’ve ever had one like it, you know exactly what I mean. If you haven’t, I hope you do someday. It didn’t fix everything. But it broke something open in me, something that had been locked tight with fear and grief and exhaustion.

I didn’t have to hold all of this alone.

The Call I Finally Made

We took Zack to school. I cried when we left. It was all too much. I felt lost.

I had already been thinking about hiring a business coach before the accident and Dad. I was two years overdue for making this decision.  The diagnosis had made it clear that I needed help. After that morning, I stopped thinking about it and made the call.

I hired Hank.

And I want to explain why.

It wasn’t just about the business. It was because I did not want to spend the rest of my dad’s life talking about cancer. I wanted to keep living. I wanted to give my dad something to watch and root for. Something that would make my son proud of his mom. I wanted to keep life as normal as I could for my family, because that felt like something I could do.

Hank helped me see what I already knew but couldn’t explain on my own: I had one offer worth building around. One-on-one coaching. The work that lit me up, that got results, that I could do from Virginia, from my parents’ home, or from a ski slope in Utah if I need to recharge my batteries.

I stopped spreading myself thin. I committed.

What I Know Now

It has now been the better part of two years since that summer.

My dad is okay. We’re grateful for every day. And I haven’t spent these two years just talking about cancer.

I’ve built a business coaching practice that is the clearest, most focused work I’ve ever done. I coach professional organizers and women entrepreneurs who are exactly where I was: talented, hardworking, and quietly spinning their wheels. I help them through the same fog I sat in: too many offers, not enough confidence, and a calendar that doesn’t reflect their actual priorities.

I know that season. I lived it.

And here’s what I learned:

You don’t have to choose between your family and your dreams. But you might have to reset one to protect the other. You might have to let go of the version of the business you built and commit to the version that actually fits your life. You might have to stop doing three things and start doing one thing really well.

Women make these trades and compromises all the time. We absorb the weight of caregiving and parenting and business ownership, and we tell ourselves it has to be all or nothing. That if we can’t give everything to everything, we should give up the dream entirely.

That’s not true. I’m proof.

It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. It just has to be honest. And it has to be yours.

Whatever is happening in your life right now – an illness, a child launching, or a business that is stuck – just know that it doesn’t have to be the reason you walk away. It might just be the reason you finally get clear.

I almost closed my business.

Instead, I built the one I was always supposed to have.