If you’ve been peeking around social media these past couple weeks, you’ll know my small business, Kindred & Co, hosted its launch party this past Sunday!! Woohoo!
Before my own, I had never been to a launch party nor hosted one before. I’ve seen launch parties of big companies when they’re launching a new product (like Disney or Apple), but as Kindred & Co is nowhere near their level, my expectations were pretty low or nonexistent at times. I wasn’t sure anyone would show up to the party, minus my roommates and sister (who was visiting for the weekend); I wasn’t sure the food would be enough; I wasn’t sure if anyone else would get excited with me; and I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t say something ridiculous when trying to thank people for coming.
But turns out, when you have an incredible support team (shoutout to my husben, sister, roommates, and a couple other gems) and prayer, beautiful things can happen.
I may not have had many or great expectations for the launch party, but it ended up being a really wonderful celebration. Celebrating where Kindred & Co has come so far, where they are headed, the vision behind the business, and celebrating friendship (kindred friendship) and community. It was beautiful to see different worlds collide from college friends to old coworkers to current coworkers and everyone in between. In a sense, it was exactly the Kindred & Co vision come to life – encouraging women to embrace life with wholehearted intention and abundant joy.
Stepping back it was hard to comprehend the launch party was for a small business I was essentially placing into existence. One of the gems wrote me a sweet note of encouragement reminding me that launches are the beginning of something, an adventure, marking anticipation for everything to come. I think I had kind of forgotten that bit, focusing more on what has happened and celebrating making it to this point (although it’s really only been 5 months or so).
But the launch was really the start of however many years Kindred & Co will have, the start of Kindred products, the start of creativity, vision, community, and celebration. The weight, significance and realization of the launch in this context is still sinking in, and I’m not sure if it’ll ever fully sink in until the next launch party (I’m a pretty slow processor). But I’m grateful for having a beginning. A beginning of an adventure, a beginning to trusting God in new ways, a beginning to learning new things, a beginning to challenges and victories, and a beginning to new kindred friendships.
If you celebrated with us, or sent encouragement and prayer my way in the last few weeks, thank you from the bottom of my heart. You help turn my expectations upside and help me as I’m learning to celebrate.* Thank you for caring about me, Kindred & Co, and the adventure of new beginnings.
*I will be writing a separate post about being celebratory in the coming weeks! Be on the lookout 🙂