Back-to-School and Coming to Terms with Change

As kids across Chicago traipse off to school, I am grappling with my own little graduate over here. Ms. Vivie Cornue, the “mayor” herself, wraps her time at Le Village.

Here she is on her first day at her big girl school!

I'm feeling…a lot. A lot that I’ve honestly been shoving into a box while drowning myself in the never ending to-do’s of parenting and growing a business.

This is so hard because it not only changes things for Vivie—it changes things for me. I’ve always been the owner of Le Village, but also a genuine member myself. My daughter has been at Le Village nearly every day since its inception. And so have I. But slowly, that time has ended. Now, I’ll be there for meetings and to support my staff and my parents (I’ll of course never be gone) but I won’t be there in the same way. At least not for now. 😉🤞🏻

The night before she set off, I sat quietly fretting and sewing tiny little flowers on her first day dress. I wanted her to remember how much I loved her while she was at school. I quietly worried and stitched this little mess of flowers and labeled her things and pressed a photo of our trio into a locket for her. 4 years and nearly every day together. It’s not been perfect. But I will never regret giving up everything to be with her. So I crafted and cried and worried.

Here’s the thing though. The last time I worried and crafted like this? Everything turned out beautifully❤️. At the time it felt like my world was spinning out of my control. I’m a planner by nature, and I like to have things just so, and this was just out of my grasp. So I crafted and cried and worried. And waited. Then it just…happened. It didn’t matter if I was ready or not.

Sometimes life is like that. It just happens and the world magically keeps turning. The last time I crafted? It changed me. Made me better and stronger and braver than I ever thought that I could be. It was the start of something beautiful…