What Blocks the View

If you’ve been with me for a while, you may remember that I hadn’t taken a real vacation in 13 years. Caregiving for Little Mama came first. Then came six years of building the business. Then caring for Papa Kemp. Somewhere in between, I never really took time to grieve. Or to rest. Or to simply be.

The MacBook Air lid was always open. Working. Creating. “Camera on” for Zoom. Life just kept life-ing, and the importance of pause quietly slipped off the to-do list.

But in 2025, something clicked. Or snapped. In a good way.

I finally chose to interrupt that pattern.

I booked a cruise.

The cruise gave me space to decompress, grieve, and calm my nervous system. I intentionally left my laptop at home and skipped the ship’s Wi-Fi package. I wasn’t disappearing. I was protecting the pause. At first, my body didn’t quite know what to do with the stillness.

I also knew exactly what I was choosing when I booked a room with a 30% obstructed view.

The lifeboat was part of the deal. It didn’t surprise me. And still, seeing it every day was a quiet reminder that the ship wasn’t designed for perfect scenery. It was designed for safety. What some might call an obstruction was actually evidence of brilliant design.

That image stayed with me long after the cruise ended. Because it mirrors what I see every day in caregiving and leadership. We often judge systems by how seamless they feel or how little space they take up, instead of by what they’re built to hold. The structures that protect us, support us, and keep things from falling apart are rarely invisible. They take up room. They interrupt the view. And they only feel unnecessary until the moment they become our lifeline.

For caregivers, this shows up in the parts of life that no one sees. The extra planning. The constant mental gymnastics. The vigilance that runs quietly in the background long after everyone else has gone to bed. Support structures rarely feel elegant. They take time and energy. And they often feel like they get in the way of a smoother, simpler life. Until they don’t.

And for leaders and those shaping cultures, policies, and experiences, the same truth applies. Support systems for caregivers and employees are often evaluated by how little disruption they cause, rather than by how well they keep people afloat when the waves rise. When design prioritizes appearance over capacity, the cost doesn’t show up immediately. It shows up later. In health. In engagement. In retention. In the places that are hardest to patch once they’ve sprung a leak.

For me, choosing that cruise wasn’t about escape or indulgence. It was about finally honoring what my body, my work, and my life had been signaling for a long time. I didn’t need more determination. I needed margin. I didn’t need a perfect view. I needed systems that could hold me while I rested, reflected, and recalibrated.

Sometimes the thing that blocks the view is the very thing designed to keep us afloat.

This is the work.

Helping leaders recognize what looks like an obstruction… and understand what it’s actually designed to hold.

More to come.

Chef Maria