The end of an era

Four days on and I want to pay tribute to someone who has been a significant part of my life for the last year. I wanted to include a photo of her but unfortunately the one photo I have of the pair of us was lost when my laptop crashed in December. In a way that is fitting because she is a very private person. If you are curious you can find a copy of the photo on Minerva's Mind. Karen is the one on the left of the photo.

Karen and I set up Minerva's Mind at the end of last summer. We had a vision and part of it was that we wanted to work with Mums who had two or more children and were wondering what was next for them: go back to work, embrace being a stay at home Mum or forge a new path. We threw our energy into the idea and what emerged was a six week course, lots of publicity, a venue, shed loads of marketing from flyers to all sorts of online routes. Unfortunately there were insufficient takers for it so it never ran. Undaunted we then created Minerva's Mind at Home which generated some interest but again did not really take off.

Increasingly as the months rolled on, cracks began to appear. Let me explain. Karen has a very successful business as an HR professional. She learnt how to use wordpress earlier this year, initially as another way of promoting Minerva's Mind, and in the spirit of play set up her HR blog which has been hugely successful, attracting lots of interest and comment. This helped her to see which way she wanted to take her business and it was different from what I had in mind. Things drifted for a while but then she had the courage to say this is not working and it is time for me to move on. I have huge respect for that because although I too could see it and was getting frustrated about stuff, I did not make the call.

Here's what I learnt from Karen. She is a consummate professional in all that she does. She has very high standards, is very composed and self-contained too. She also holds strong convictions and values - no one gets between Karen and her family for example. From these and other things I observed during our working relationship, I can see how she got to the position of HR Director in an NHS Trust. In addition she gave me the space to grieve the loss of our business partnership for which I am truly grateful because it has allowed me to come out the other side and start working on my ideas. Finally and perhaps most importantly, going through the whole creative process with Karen including the running of events together, showed me that I am a good facilitator.

All that remains is for me to say thank you to Karen for all that you have given me. I hope you will retain your link with the Minerva's Mind fan page and I wish you all the best with your endeavours going forward. I will always think back on our time together with fond memories.