An Epic Stomach punch

Have you ever been punched in the stomach? I haven’t...until recently. But not a physical gut punch. A metaphorical blow to include every organ in my body. I will begin with the heart.

This wound is fresh.

Rejection is hurtful but to be terminated? Nothing I have ever experienced. Termination is a word that has never been in my vocabulary unless I was talking about Sara Connor.

In my 53 years of life, I have never been more giving, served more people and literally changed lives for the better. I have never been more devoted to a cause. My friend recently shared a saying I adopted...as life goes, you learn, you earn and you serve. Love this because that is what I do now, I serve.

You must be wondering, how do you get terminated when you are serving? Exactly. This is why I began with the heart. To add insult to injury, the termination came the day I arrived at a destination light years away from home to celebrate my son’s wedding, the first of our four children to get married.

The magnitude of deep self-reflection could not be more evident. The humility associated with severing this particular relationship cannot be measured.

I did my best but the sucker punch was felt all weekend and will never go away until I am dust.

My despair was only revealed in a quick conversation with my mother-in-law because I could not stop the tears. I could barely talk about it and I chalked it up to the unfortunate timing. Her response blew me away.

She looked me in the eye and said “Your timing surrounding things beyond your control has always been terrible.” Confused, my reaction, written all over my face, was “huh?”. I thought to myself, I’ve really never had anything this bad happen to me. Yet, she spoke the truth and reminded me of some of the most challenging moments in my life and the timing for each of them was beyond terrible. And, they were worse than this blip.

My most heartbreaking life moments have happened during some type of celebration or gathering to which I was committed and there was no way out. I had to suck it up and deal with my heartbreak later. I realized I’ve always been thankful for the timing because the event served as a distraction.

My mother in law then said...”you guys (me & my husband) are resilient and you always plow through, I’m not worried about you two.”

Well, there ya have it. The matriarch. She was so matter of fact, direct and up-lifting. Her belief in me was all I needed for my head to snap back...but my heart still hurt.

Terminated?!!? Ugh.

Time heals all wounds and I had forgotten about some much more devastating events I had encountered in my life. Time had passed and I learned how to cope with those unfortunate situations. The reason I felt this was so terrible was because it had just happened.

Update:

Hind-sight has revealed several things and the most enlightening was this rejection turned out to be a good thing and an excellent learning moment. The partner who terminated us was incredibly demanding which we knew ahead of time. What we didn’t know was the partnership was not a match for our business and our approach to our clients.

In the end, we did not lose anything. We still had our clients and we maintained the more important partnership serving the same clients. And the partnership we continue to do business with embraces the same philosophy we do so it is a much better match for our organization.

What we learned as entrepreneurs is we get to decide who we work with on a daily basis. While we were not the ones to terminate this particular partnership, the termination turned out to be a relief. It gave us much more clarity moving forward about who we decide to do business with and to be certain the fit is correct.

I am crafting this follow-up portion of this post almost 3 years later. As I re-read the initial post when the wound was fresh, the event came back to me like it was yesterday. However, the sting, the hurt, the pain are all gone. The relief and wisdom associated with this unfortunate circumstance are invaluable.

Just like being punched in the stomach, the pain, hurt and humiliation are immediate and linger for a time but eventually you heal. Cliches out the wazoo on this one…what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, some things are meant to be, it happened for a reason, put your big girl panties on and deal with it, pull yourself up by your bootstraps.

Whatever we need to tell ourselves to get through difficult times and move on…find your coping mechanism and use it. In my case, the source came from a very wise woman who was dealt much worse cards than me in life.

Suck it up buttercup.