The Universe will test you

August 12, 2026

The Universe sends us teachers, lessons, and tests on a daily basis.

Some are small. Some are life-changing.

How we react to them is determined by every teacher, every lesson, every boundary, and every test that came before. Sometimes the Universe places us in a familiar situation simply to show us how much we have grown—and to see whether we will respond as the person we once were or as the person we have worked so hard to become.

Recently, I was put to the test in a business situation.

I was considering sharing part of my space with another professional one day a week. She is someone I know casually, and at first, the alignment felt good. It seemed like it could be a perfect fit and a win for both of us.

But it was definitely going to require sacrifice on my end.

The station is connected to our private office, and the day we are closed is not really a day off for us. It is one of our most important behind-the-scenes workdays.

Darya and I use every inch of the space to create products, prepare for events, organize inventory, plan classes, work on displays, and spread out our many ongoing projects. Sometimes we make quite a glorious mess because we are closed and have the freedom to leave everything out until the work is finished.

Sharing the space would mean completely clearing our workspace every week, changing our rhythm, interrupting our creative flow, and then setting everything back up afterward.

It took a lot of consideration—and some resignation to the fact that this would no longer be our normal flow.

Still, I am open-minded. I am willing to try new things. I believe opportunities sometimes ask us to stretch.

Financially, I felt it could be worth the inconvenience.

There was also another significant consideration: I would be handing over a key to my business to someone I barely know.

Inside our building is a substantial amount of inventory, equipment, furnishings, products, and everything my daughter and I have spent years building.

That is not a small amount of trust.

I was willing to extend that trust because I believed we were entering an arrangement based on mutual respect, integrity, and a shared understanding of the value being exchanged.

Everything seemed to be in place until we had the conversation about money.

I shared the amount I knew was fair.

That amount was not simply for the use of a salon station. It reflected the disruption to our workspace, the long day she would have access to it, the luxurious and essentially private environment, the off-street parking, the established location, and the enormous level of trust involved in giving someone access to our entire business while we were closed.

In my previous salon arrangements, I had employees working on a 50/50 split. Considering what someone could potentially earn during a 12-hour day, I felt the amount I proposed was fair.

She was surprised by the price but did not tell me in person what she had been expecting.

Then, a few hours later, I received a text saying she had been thinking of paying less than half of what I had asked.

Even though I believed my original price was fair, I lowered it substantially because I was trying to be accommodating.

That was the moment I began negotiating against myself.

The conversation then shifted toward what she believed she would be bringing to my business, how much my business might benefit from her clients seeing the space, and how we could revisit the price later once we better understood what she was contributing.

Wait.

Hold on.

I have a successful, well-established business that I built from the ground up.

I created it through years of hard work, risk, sacrifice, creativity, reinvention, and persistence.

I fought hard to keep what I had built after my divorce. I rebuilt my life while protecting my business, my vision, and my family’s future. I have made incredibly difficult decisions to preserve what I created.

I have released people, relationships, situations, and opportunities that were not aligned with my vision or my peace.

I do not need anyone else to make my business successful.

I was not advertising the space.

I was not looking for someone to fill it.

I did not reach out and ask anyone to come in.

Someone approached me, and I chose to view it as an opportunity rather than an inconvenience.

But somewhere during that conversation, I realized I had gone from generously considering an opportunity to defending the value of what I had built.

And that hit me hard. It felt like a slap in the face.

Not simply because someone wanted to negotiate, but because I suddenly realized that the business, the space, the access, the trust, and everything I was willing to give up were not being valued in the same way that I valued them.

It felt as though what I was offering was being minimized while I was being told how fortunate I would be to receive something in return.

I live from a place of abundance. I believe there is always enough.

I believe aligned opportunities do not require us to diminish ourselves, abandon our boundaries, or accept less than what feels right just to prove we are cooperative.

I have worked hard to release relationships rooted in scarcity, imbalance, and the belief that one person must lose for another person to gain.

People living from abundance and people living from lack are not traveling in the same direction.

A few years ago, I probably would have backed down. I would have caved and ignored the feeling in my body.

I would have worried more about disappointing someone else than disappointing myself.

Not anymore.

It has taken me more than 50 years to know my worth.

Protecting my peace is not selfish, maintaining a boundary is not unkind, and choosing myself does not require an apology.

I know the value of what I have created.

I know what it cost me emotionally, financially, physically, and spiritually to build the life and business I have today.

I also understand that trust and access go hand in hand.

Giving someone a key to your livelihood is not simply part of a rental agreement. It is an extraordinary extension of trust. When I realized we did not share the same understanding of what was being exchanged, I knew I could no longer comfortably extend that level of access.

I have a responsibility to protect what Darya and I have built: the people we serve, the artisans whose work we carry, our inventory, our livelihood, and the energy of the space itself.

There was no coming back from that realization for me.

There was no conversation that could convince me to begin the arrangement and pretend I had not felt devalued.

The trust was gone before it ever had the chance to grow.

I knew that if I moved forward, I would begin the arrangement with discomfort, resentment, and the feeling that I had once again abandoned myself to accommodate someone else.

That would not have been fair to either of us.

So I changed my mind.

I chose my peace.

And I chose to trust the lesson.

Sometimes the Universe puts us in a situation that looks like an opportunity, only to reveal that the real opportunity is to practice the boundaries we have spent years learning to create.

This time, I listened.

I am grateful this happened before it ever started and before our normal flow was disrupted.

And I am grateful for the confirmation that I am no longer the woman who abandons herself to keep someone else comfortable.

I know my value.

I trust myself.

I choose my peace.

Once again, I thank the Universe for always having my back and showing me exactly what I need to see.

And I genuinely wish her well on her path ahead.

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