Made by a Human: The Beauty and Hardship in Organic Growth
Made by a Human: The Beauty and Hardship in Organic Growth
My son just turned nine. Every so often, usually at bedtime, he asks how long it will be until we go back to Mauritius or on another exotic holiday which would require a airplane flight. And every time, I don't have a clear answer for him.
Made by a Human: The Beauty and Hardship in Organic Growth is not an article about marketing strategy. It is about what happens behind the scenes of building a business slowly, honestly and by hand, while raising two children whose dreams don't pause because their mom is still bootstrapping.
The Price of Owning My Own Time
When I left the corporate world, I knew I was trading a consistent paycheque for something I valued more: the freedom to own my own time, and to build work that felt true to me.
What I didn't fully understand was how that trade would feel at the kitchen table.
Organic growth is slow. There is no paid shortcut, no guaranteed month, no predictable income landing on the 25th. Meanwhile, the bills arrive on schedule. School fees. Sports fees. Equipment, travel, entry costs. The rhythm of family life doesn't slow down to match the pace of a growing business.
I told myself that leaving a corporate salary shouldn't have to mean less Lego, less sushi and fewer spoils. But eventually, I had to sit my children down and have that conversation. Gently, honestly, and with more courage than I expected it to take.
It was one of the hardest conversations I have had as a parent. And one of the most human.
What Socials doesn’t see
In the same season, my daughter, who is fourteen, received her Protea colours for horse riding and for aerials silks and hoop (artistic category). She has just come home from Serbia with two gold medals from the IAAA championships and just re-qualified for Team SA 2027. My son, now nine, won a gold medal in his U10 basketball league.
#Proudmom is the hashtag
These are the moments people love, like and comment on. And they deserve every bit of that celebration.
But nobody sees what happens behind the scenes. The spreadsheet. The quiet calculations before saying yes to another tournament. The decision, made over and over again, that I am not willing to sacrifice my children's talent because my business is still finding its feet.
Their medals are real. So is the strain that sits underneath them. Both can be true at once.
Living in My Type 4
My Enneagram tritype is 748. I lead with Type 7, the enthusiastic visionary, supported by the creativity of Type 4 and the drive of Type 8. Lately, I have been living very much in my 4.
The Type 4 is the Individualist, deeply attuned to feeling, meaning and authenticity. Its gift is emotional depth: the ability to sit with what is real, to find beauty in the bittersweet and to create from the heart.
Its shadow is more painful. The 4 carries a quiet sense that something essential is missing. Its vice is envy, not of what others own so much as a longing for the ease, the wholeness or the belonging that others seem to have. For a 4, the gap between what is and what could be is felt intensely.
Under financial pressure, this can look like:
•Melancholy and longing, missing the holidays, the ease, the version of life that felt lighter.
•Comparison, scrolling through memories of family holidays and trips
•Feeling unseen, sharing the wins while the struggle stays hidden.
•Questioning identity, wondering whether choosing meaningful work was selfish rather than brave.
The growth path for a 4 is equanimity: the capacity to hold every feeling without being swept away by any one of them. Not denying the grief, but not letting it write the whole story either.
When the 7 and 8 Run Out of Fuel
Usually, my 7 brings the optimism and my 8 brings the force. The 7 says, "Something wonderful is around the corner." The 8 says, "I will make it happen."
Right now, both are tired.
The 7 has reframed so many times that the silver linings feel thin. The 8 has carried so much, for so long, that strength has started to feel like armour. When these energies burn out, the 4 is often what is left, and it asks me to stop, to feel and to be honest about what this season costs.
That honesty is not weakness. It is where real resilience begins.
How the Enneagram Has Supported Me
There have been moments this year when giving up felt like the sensible choice. Just last week, a friend helped me make my CV AI friendly. Go back to the paycheque. Make the uncertainty stop.
What has kept me here is self-awareness.
The Enneagram has given me language for what is happening inside me. When the longing and comparison rise, I can recognise my 4 rather than believing every feeling is the full truth. When I want to jump to the next shiny idea, I can see my 7 trying to escape discomfort. When I grip too tightly and try to force an outcome, I know my 8 is protecting me from feeling vulnerable.
Seeing the pattern doesn't make the bills disappear. But it changes how I meet them. Instead of being swept away by fear or exhaustion, I can pause, name what is speaking and choose my next step consciously.
That pause is the reason I am still here. Awareness hasn't removed the pressure. It has given me a steadier place to stand within it.
The Beauty in Organic Growth
So why keep going?
Because organic growth, for all its slowness, builds something that cannot be bought. Every client who finds me has chosen to. Every article is written from lived experience, not borrowed from somewhere else. Everything I am building is rooted in my own story, which makes it honest, durable and genuinely mine.
And my children are watching. They are learning that dreams sometimes do mean sacrifice.
That you can be proud and stretched at the same time. That a family can talk about money with honesty instead of shame. Their discipline in the arena, their early mornings and their courage to compete on an international stage mirror exactly what I am asking of myself.
We are all, in our own way, growing organically.
The freedom to own your own time comes at a price. But so does giving your time away to something that isn’t yours.
The Seasons of Organic Growth
Nothing in nature grows all year round. A tree doesn't apologise for losing its leaves in autumn, or for standing bare and still through winter. It simply lets go of what has served its purpose, rests, and trusts that spring will come.
We rarely offer ourselves the same grace.
We are taught to expect constant growth: more followers, more income, more progress, every single month. But real, organic growth moves in seasons. There are times of visible blooming, and there are times when everything important is happening underground.
Being authentic means honouring both.
It means sharing what is true rather than what performs well. It means letting your work grow at the pace of real relationships, rather than forcing it to match someone else's timeline. It means trusting that what is built honestly will hold.
The Death of the Limiting Box
This is where the Enneagram has been such a powerful companion for me, and for so many of the people I work with.
The Enneagram is not about putting you in a box. It shows you the box you have already built: the survival strategies, beliefs and patterns that once kept you safe but may now be keeping you small. I must always be strong. I must never need anyone. I must keep moving so I don't have to feel. These boxes are often so familiar that we mistake them for who we are.
Awareness is the autumn. It is the moment we begin to see which leaves are ready to fall.
Letting go is the winter. It can feel like loss, like something in us is dying, because in a way, it is. The old identity, the old armour, the old way of coping slowly decays.
And that decay is not failure. It is compost. It is exactly what makes room for spring.
What Organic Growth Asks of Us
•Patience, trusting the roots even when nothing is visible above the soil.
•Honesty, showing up as you are, not as the version you think will be liked.
•Release, allowing old patterns and limiting beliefs to fall away without clinging to them.
•Self-compassion, remembering that resting seasons are part of growth, not a pause from it.
What grows organically is not rushed into being. It is allowed to become.
Explore the Enneagram With Me
If any part of this story feels familiar, whether you are building a business, raising a family, carrying financial pressure or simply wondering why you respond the way you do when life gets hard, I would love to walk alongside you.
Through Individual inSight, I offer the IEQ9 Enneagram assessment and a 90-minute debrief as the start of a journey. Together, we explore your type, how you move under stress and growth, your gifts and blind spots, and the practical pathways back to balance. It is the same self-awareness that has carried me through this season, and it can become a steady anchor for yours.
Find out more or book here: Discover and Align
Closing Reflection
The medals hang on the wall. The debit orders go through. And somewhere between the two, a family is learning what it means to grow something real.
To my son: I still don't know when we will go on another 4 star holiday. But I know we will get there, together.
To my daughter: Yes, you will compete next year in both the sports that you have chosen and that you love.
What does your behind-the-scenes look like, and who knows about it?
Reflect on it, share in the comments, or reach out if you would like to explore it together.
