"We know that in September, we will wander through the warm winds of summer's wreckage. We will welcome summer's ghost." -Henry Rollins
Some of you know about Faeve’s relationship with Mulberry Integrative Medicine in The Villages, FL. My ex-husband Chris Cheshire and I own that practice. Dr. Cheshire actually also owns Faeve, which many people didn’t know. Between the business and our children, our lives constantly cross. For a few years, we both lived on our own island - me at Faeve, him at Mulberry. We co-parented and co-existed.
Somewhere in the past few years, healing had started. We realized we have always been excellent business partners. One day, Dr. Cheshire walked into Faeve and told me “it’s time to be partners again.”
Both of us make our living in the healing arts. We had come to the epiphany if we couldn’t heal ourselves, how could we heal others. This sat with us for a long time. Then one day, our anger was gone. Our ideas started to align.
But the true epiphany came from a tree. When we got together what seems a million years ago, we bought a baby baby tree in Chinatown in NYC. It was a Jade “Money Tree”. During the beginning of our business and personal relationship, we decided that the tree was going to be the symbol of Mulberry Integrative Medicine. We would base our business decisions based on the health of the tree. If the tree was growing healthy, we were in the right direction. If it started to die, we were going the wrong way.
The 4 inch baby tree eventually became 7 ft tall. It lives in my backyard. When we started Faeve, we got another baby Jade tree. It is now 4 ft tall. As Chris and I were going through our personal crisis together, they both started to lose leaves.
After our separation personally and we went our separate ways, the Mulberry jade tree all but died. I was pretty sure I would have to dig it up and throw it out. The Faeve tree however, was doing okay. Still alive but not nearly as full as it once was.
One day when he came to drop off our daughter he saw the tree. He said something to me and I just said “it is what it is”. Our behavior to each other had affected the business and there was the proof.
It was soon after that we decided for the sake of our children and employees that we needed to heal. To come out of this different than other divorced couples, to stop hurting ourselves and each other. There was a lot of deep conversations. Healthy boundaries created.
After one particular deep conversation, I went down to the tree. There were small almost non existent leaves starting to poke out from the dead branches. It was indeed, still alive.
I took a picture and sent it to him. I didn’t have to say anything. I knew he knew. So then we started working together even more. Healing, understanding. Looking at our relationship as adults, not bitter children. Every time we had of of these “talks” the next day the tree would grow back more leaves.
The picture above is the tree during that time, and the pictures I sent him. Since we started talking about growing the companies again and working together as business partners and friends, the tree has exploded. We have learned that in this life, there are people that are meant to be in your life, just not maybe in the way you thought. When you start to look at people and relationships from a spiritual nature vs a societal nature, things change.
Then the trees grow.
So below you will learn what this means for the practices, and most importantly, for your health. Now that we have healed, we can do our job to you even better than before.
Meredith
