The Philosophy of Being in Someone’s Corner

There is a very specific kind of love that sounds like “I have an idea.” And instead of being met with all the reasons it might not work, you hear: “Okay. How do we make it happen?”

Today marks seven years with the person who has answered me that way more times than I could possibly count.

Seven years of ideas. Good ones, questionable ones, really bad ones, ideas that turned into something beautiful and ideas that disappeared two weeks later after I had already convinced myself they were going to be something. Seven years of plans made in the car, dreams announced while brushing our teeth, late-night “hear me outs” conversations, new directions, starting things, stopping things, becoming parents, changing priorities, and becoming versions of ourselves that the two people who met seven years ago could never have imagined.

Somewhere inside all of that becoming, I realized how incredibly blessed I have been to know what it feels like to have someone in my corner.

The older I get, the more sacred that feels because being loved well does not only make you feel loved.

It makes you brave.

There are people in our lives who somehow make the world feel a little more possible. They don’t necessarily have the answers. They can’t promise the “thing” will work. Sometimes they don’t even completely understand the “thing” we’re dreaming about. But they do make us feel like we are allowed to try anyway.

The Kept Offering Co. exists in large part because I have one of those people. This business started with a version of me saying, “I have an idea,” and my husband saying a version of, “Okay.”

Again and again and again.

He didn’t need to have the same dream for it to matter to him. He didn’t need to understand why I was obsessing over a particular aspect of a launch, why I suddenly wanted to change something I had already spent hours planning, or why some tiny detail that most people would never notice felt incredibly important to me.

Because he understood something much simpler: it mattered to me. And because it mattered to me, it mattered to him.

I think there is something so profoundly loving about that. Not “I love everything you love,” or, “I understand every part of you.” Just, “I know this matters to you, so I’m going to treat it like it matters.”

For a long time, I think I imagined support as someone standing right beside you, chasing the exact same dream. But more and more, I think support often looks like someone standing at the bottom of the ladder while you climb. Not climbing it for you, or telling you which rung to step on. But holding it steady.

And sometimes that’s the difference between having a dream and actually feeling brave enough to go after it…Maybe that is what being someone’s person really is. Not knowing exactly who they will become, but deciding you’re willing to keep making room for them to become that.

Seven years is long enough to know that the person you choose won’t stay exactly the person you first met (thank God), but neither will you.

Life changes us. Parenthood changes us. Work changes us. Loss changes us. Joy changes us. Sometimes the thing you once wanted more than anything no longer fits the life you’re building. Sometimes you discover a part of yourself that has been waiting for enough room to come alive.

And I think one of the most beautiful things we can do for another person is refuse to make them feel guilty for becoming.

To love someone well is not to freeze them in the version of themselves that was easiest for us to understand. It’s to stay curious, to keep learning them, to keep asking what they are dreaming about now, to keep making room.

I think back on all the versions of me that have existed over these seven years and how many of them my husband has had to meet for the first time. The woman he met. The woman I became when we got married. The woman who became a mother. The woman who became a mother again. The woman who changed her relationship with work. The woman who decided she wanted to build something of her own. The woman who learned turning fabric and thread into something beautiful is meaningful to her.

And through every version, I have never felt like I had to stay small enough to remain recognizable.

That might be one of the greatest gifts someone can give you: the freedom to become. Maybe that’s why I have started thinking differently about the phrase “your person.”

We talk a lot about finding your person, and I understand why. There is something beautiful about recognizing the person you want beside you through the strange, ordinary, devastating, hilarious, breathtaking business of being alive. But I think “your person” is less about finding some magical person who completes you and more about what two people continually choose to be for each other.

Because love is very easy to romanticize (ironic, huh?). Showing up is much less glamorous. Showing up looks like carrying boxes, and listening to someone talk through the exact same problem for the seventeenth time. Running an errand you didn’t particularly want to run, or remembering something that mattered to them. Picking up the slack when their hands are full. Celebrating the small win before anyone else understands why it’s a big one.

Saying, “Send me the link,” “Tell me what you need,” “We’ll figure it out.” It’s all so ordinary, but I think that’s exactly why it matters so much.

Because most of our lives will be ordinary days.

Most of love will happen far away from anniversaries and flowers and grand declarations. It’ll happen in kitchens and parking lots and living rooms. At bedtime. In text messages. In the five minutes someone makes for you when they really didn’t have five minutes to give.

It will happen in all the little moments when someone has the choice to walk past what you are carrying or reach down and take one side.

The more I build The Kept Offering, the more I realize that nearly everything I care about with this business comes back to that same idea: People deserve to feel remembered. They deserve to know that someone noticed. Someone listened, thought of them after the conversation ended. That someone saw something and thought, “This is so you.”

The gift itself has never really been the whole point. The meaning is in the choosing. The remembering. The showing up. And the more I think about it, the more I believe the people we choose deserve that same kind of intentionality.

We talk so much about finding the right people. Find your village. Find your partner. Find your people. Yes! Find them! Hold onto them and thank God for them. But there is another half of that conversation that matters just as much…

Be that person too.

Be the friend who asks about the dream again six months later. Be the partner who hears “I have an idea” and responds with curiosity instead of immediately listing the obstacles. Be the sister who remembers the hard date, the neighbor who brings dinner, the person who saves the seat.

Be the person who makes someone feel like their ideas are worth saying out loud. You don’t have to build the dream for them, you don’t have to solve every problem. You definitely don’t even have to understand every single thing.

Sometimes loving someone well simply means creating enough safety around them that they become brave enough to try.

I hope every “I have an idea” girl finds her “let’s make it happen” boy. I really do. But even more than that, I hope we all become the kind of people who answer someone else’s vulnerability with possibility. Because what a privilege it is when someone trusts us enough to share their vulnerability out loud. What a responsibility it is to handle them gently.

So today, seven years into loving the same person through what already feels like a hundred different versions of ourselves, I keep coming back to gratitude. For the man who has never needed my dreams to belong to him before helping me carry them. The person who has made me feel like I’m allowed to have ideas. The one who has held the ladder steady way more times than he probably realizes. The guy who shows the heck up.

Again and again.

The greatest gift he has given me may not be believing in every idea I’ve ever had, but making me feel like I am allowed to have them. I hope seven years from now and seventy years from now, we are still giving each other that gift. The freedom to dream, the safety to change, the courage to try, and the comfort of knowing that whatever version of ourselves we meet next, there will still be someone standing in our corner saying:

“I’m here.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Okay.”

“Let’s make it happen.”

—Jade

Founder, The Kept Offering Co.

An Invitation…

Think of the person who has made you feel possible. The one who has held the ladder while you climbed. The one who has made room for you to become. The one whose presence in your life has somehow made you a little braver.

Tell them.

And then ask yourself:

Whose dreams can I make a little more possible, too?