As a daughter of an immigrant business woman, I have so many vivid memories of helping my mom sustain and grow her company from as early as I can remember. The SKU numbers lining boxes as I pulled these beautifully handmade jacket clips and dress pins fulfilling orders, the musty smell of the aged wood as we cleaned out her warehouse in my grandfather’s storage units, the rhythm of folding up clear boxes as we packaged hundreds of veils in the evenings. The all-encompassing nature of small business on a family has completely shaped my understanding of how life unfolds. Then the inevitable happened - we came full circle and here we are.
The instagram generation has allowed our business to take off, but as a creative company who believes in making beautiful things, we also sit in the murky tension of projecting what’s real and what’s curated. Our blog has become a space where we share more of what goes on behind the scenes, the reality of the toll it takes on a day to day when Dot and I are responsible for running the business as it is, while keeping our eyes on where we want it to go. Often, the weight of making sure we have enough to cover everyone’s salaries, pay rent, bring in inventory, understand taxes, make hard decisions, cast vision, cultivate company culture, and the rest of it, feels impossible to carry. As wives and mothers pursuing the hope of beautiful, thriving careers for ourselves and others, we then come home to our families, our husbands bearing much of the load alongside us hoping that even a shoulder to lean on will be enough to lift us to tomorrow. Packaging a few hundred cards after the girls have gone to bed isn’t out of the question.
As difficult as certain seasons have been, we pray that our girls are seeing their mamas learn to do this thing well. Sometimes this means asking them to pause as we answer an important call, trek with us across the world to work a show; perhaps one day it will mean fulfilling orders from boxes lined with SKU numbers. For now, we bask in being able to do the work that we love as we snuggle on the couch with books, trusting that today is today and tomorrow will be provided. Daily bread, daily bread.
in hope,
pat
