The Gift I Gave When She Quit

My friend Reva quit her job on a Tuesday in November. She had been talking about it for two years. She had a list of reasons not to. A mortgage. A title she had worked hard to get. The way it would look. The uncertainty of what came next.

And then one Tuesday she just did it.

She texted me four words: I did it. Finally.

I knew exactly what those four words cost her. Two years of cost. So I did not text back good for you and leave it there. I wanted to mark the moment in a way that matched its actual size.

I thought about what she was stepping into. Not a new job, she did not have one yet. Something more uncomfortable and more exciting than that. Open space. The thing she had protected herself from for two years because open space is terrifying and also the only place anything interesting grows.

I found a print. A simple one, just text, in a typeface I knew she would like. It said something a writer she admired had said once about starting over: the blank page is not an ending. It is the only thing that was ever going to hold anything worth reading.

I had it framed. I sent it with a card that said: you have been writing in the margins for two years. Now you have the whole page.

She put it in her home office. The one she set up for the thing she was finally going to do.

She sent me a photo of it on her wall a week later. Next to her desk. Where she would see it every morning.

The best gift for someone who just made a brave choice is one that says: I have been watching you work toward this. I knew you would get here. And I believe in what happens next.