Like a Garden

Over the past couple of weekends I’ve been working on a section of my garden: pulling out old shrubs, planting new ones, and putting in some flowers. I always find working in the garden very satisfying, even when the work is hard and I’m exhausted at the end. Every year there is something to rearrange, change, or add. I have discovered that running a business is much like keeping a garden. Parts of it don’t grow exactly as expected or planned, and changes in the environment affect it. A business is alive, just like a garden; it has its own internal forces that we can’t control and must find a way to work with.

INELDA too needs tending. We are training more people and receiving more requests to go to different cities and parts of the country to train. We have also had some international requests to help feed the growth of the end-of-life doula movement abroad—requests that we are hoping to respond to. We at INELDA have also felt a shift in the environmental forces propelling the field forward. In responding to all these organic shifts and external developments we have begun an internal process of exploring how to better serve the field and stay at the leading edge of its evolution. So, we are looking at what we need to rearrange, change, or add—just like my garden at home.