teamwork is sexy

a few months ago, my husband texted me from the office early in the morning. "i need a picture of you. right now." no explanation. completely normal behaviour for someone who has lived with my ideas for years, so i didn't ask questions. i had just rolled out of bed. my hair looked like i had a good night of sleep. i took the most ridiculous selfie i could think of, pulled a stupid grin, hit send and carried on with my morning. a few weeks later, my new health insurance card arrived. guess which picture he had uploaded. that selfie. the one where i looked like i had survived a small natural disaster. it's genuinely one of my favourite photos of myself now. mostly because every time i pull that card out of my wallet, i laugh. and honestly, i think that's us. we build businesses. we raise children. we survive ordinary tuesdays. we dream ridiculously big. but we never take ourselves too seriously. life is already doing enough of that for everyone.

what i love most about us isn't that we have big dreams. it's that we can laugh in the middle of building them. because somewhere between product launches, school runs, full time jobs and approximately seven thousand conversations that begin with "hear me out...", we've somehow managed to keep the fun. my husband has never once told me one of my ideas was too unrealistic. trust me. some of them absolutely sounded unrealistic. he listened anyway. asked questions. challenged them. made them better. and then, more often than not, we built them. sometimes i think he believes in my ideas before i do. and maybe that's one of the greatest gifts another person can give you. not certainty. belief. not the kind that blindly agrees with everything. the kind that says, "okay... let's figure this out." i don't think enough people talk about that version of love. the quiet one. the practical one. the one that empties the dishwasher while you're finishing a design. the one that makes dinner because your brain is still somewhere inside tomorrow's to do list. the one that hears "i've got another idea..." for the five hundredth time... and still smiles.

we're not one of those couples who pretend everything is effortless. sometimes we're tired. sometimes we're stressed. sometimes we're discussing whose turn it is to deal with whatever mysterious noise is coming from one of the kids' rooms. real romance. but somehow we've always been on the same team. never perfect. always together. people sometimes ask me how i manage working full time, raising two children and building a business. the answer has never been me. it's us. because behind every design, every late night idea, every leap of faith and every crazy plan, there are two people quietly building the same life. one of us usually has the idea. the other asks how we're going to make it happen. the funny part is that those roles change all the time. and honestly, i think teamwork is incredibly underrated. flowers are lovely. date nights are important. but nothing is sexier than someone who looks at your slightly ridiculous dream, helps you build it and still uses your worst selfie on your health insurance card.