This story is based on my work with a client. I have changed identifying details to protect her privacy.

She came to see me because she was ready to quit her job.

She had helped build the company over ten years and was now its COO. She cared about the work, but she was miserable. Other companies had offered her CEO positions. She didn’t believe in their products, and she didn’t want a new job that would take even more time from her children.

This story is based on my work with a client. I changed identifying details to protect his privacy.

When he first came to see me, he hated his job. He felt trapped inside a world of difficult personalities and confrontations. The people around him appeared to have the power to diminish him, anger him, and ruin his day. He knew he couldn’t continue living this way, but he had no idea what else he wanted to do.

A situation was brought to me recently that touched something I care deeply about. A company was struggling financially. The owner hired someone to come in, turn things around, and make the company profitable. He did. The numbers improved. The company became profitable. He accomplished exactly what he had been hired to accomplish.

But people started leaving. One of them was an original founder. She had been there for ten years. She had helped build the company. She knew its history, its people, its customers. Ten years of her life were woven into the place.

The owner said to me, “She can be replaced.”

“No,” I said. “She can't.”

Dear Friend,

Today I watched you begin the process of leaving the business you built.

It was beautiful.

And heartbreaking.

You spoke about leaving something that has held your time, your attention, your creativity, and your heart for many years.

As I listened, I found myself wanting to remind you to be so tender with yourself.

It is such a deeply human experience to leave something we have poured our life into.

She sat across from me, hands folded in her lap, and told me about her boss.

He was angry. He was unprofessional. She had a long list of evidence, and she delivered it with the certainty of someone who had been building her case for a long time.

She wanted to go to HR. She wanted to file a complaint. She wanted to quit. Three plans. All of them pointed at him.

All Of Her Energy Was Pointed At Him

I was stuck on the Bay Bridge and sobbing.

My body had been trying to tell me something for years. That night, it stopped asking.

Traffic wasn't moving. My phone was dead. My son was at daycare waiting for me. Again.

And somewhere back in a conference room in the city I had just spent three days smiling in, there was a version of me still playing along.

The conference had gone well.

I said the right things. I laughed at the right moments. I was good at this. The salary said so. The stock options said so.

I was living the dream.

Except I wasn't.

The silence in his story felt charged, like the moment right before a wave breaks.
He sat across from me describing a meeting with his boss, and I could feel it — that invisible shift in the air when something unspoken enters the room.

He told me about the conversation — nothing dramatic, nothing explosive.
Just a simple exchange where his boss said one thing, but the space between them said something else entirely.

He had felt it immediately: a tightening across his chest, a flicker in his stomach, the swift rise of an emotion he didn’t yet have language for.

When we bring love, presence, and consciousness into the workplace, everything changes.
Work becomes more meaningful, relationships soften, and leadership feels natural instead of forced. This piece explores how the wisdom of Aikido and the 25th Gene Key—Universal Love—can transform how we work, lead, and connect with one another.