It is finished.

 After 18 months, the Very Hard Thing is finally finished.

I cried.

I've literally spent 1000 hours of my life in the last year and a half working towards this outcome. So many strategy meetings, books on negotiation, hours of lost sleep, and new gray hairs. I've started therapy because of the stress and anxiety. 

Looking back with hindsight, perhaps we could have avoided some quagmires. But in many ways, what we did was inherently difficult, and as hard as it was, so much had to fall into place to make it possible at all. So many people helped us, and I am immensely grateful.

I am relieved to close this chapter, but a little sad that we can't ever really talk about it, not in any deep way. It's this thing that has been both agonizing and fascinating as a high-stakes negotiation. But it's also hard to grasp from the outside why this would be so difficult (and in our perfect world, it wouldn't be!). 

So we'll move forward focused on the outcome, without ever telling the story of the process, because that's the way it has to be. Time to celebrate and move on, so now I can turn the 1/3 of my brain and time that has been occupied by this to other things. 

Cheers to finishing a Very Hard Thing!