No one told me that building a business would first require burning the life I was supposed to want.
You know the one — the life built by other people’s expectations. The one that looked so good on paper. A life curated by checkboxes: successful career, respectable partnership, competent parenting. A life praised by the outside world, but quietly suffocating on the inside.
Before I ever stepped into this version of my work — as a speaker, author, and host of Rabbit Hole Reflections — I was the woman who kept everything running for everyone else. I wore the armour of being dependable, high-achieving, self-sacrificing.
I was a military veteran and a former educator. I knew how to lead, how to serve, how to silence my needs to meet everyone else’s. I knew how to smile while suppressing the ache in my chest.
I knew how to shrink in all the ways women are conditioned to — soften your voice, smooth out your edges, don’t take up too much space. Be agreeable. Be easy to be around.
But underneath the polished surface was a voice that hadn’t been heard. The voice inside me that had grown tired of whispering. A fire that refused to die out no matter how many times I tried to dim it. A version of me I hadn’t yet allowed myself to meet — let alone become.
Building this business wasn’t just about creating an income or platform. It was about coming home to myself. For many women — especially those of us who have spent years living by the rules — entrepreneurship is less about business and more about becoming. It’s a reclamation. Of our time. Of our values. Of our voice.
We don’t just build brands — we rebuild ourselves. We unlearn the belief that our worth is tied to being useful. We start leading not just from our résumés, but from our wisdom. We stop editing out our softness. We stop apologizing for our stories. We realize that what makes us different is what makes us powerful.
I didn’t start this work because I had a five-year business plan. I started it because I was finally ready to step out of the shadows — mine and other women’s. I needed a space where honesty could breathe and be honoured, where we could speak without code-switching, without shrinking. I wanted it to be loud.
And here’s what I’ve learned: Arrival doesn’t always look like a ribbon-cutting ceremony. Sometimes it looks like sitting in the ashes of what no longer fits. It looks like grieving what you thought you were supposed to want. It looks like being brave enough to stay with yourself through the unraveling.
Because this isn’t about perfection. It’s about power. The kind of power that comes from truth-telling. The kind that doesn't need to prove anything — only to stand rooted, unwavering.
And if you take anything from my story, let it be this: The business you’re building will only be as honest as the voice you build it with.
Let it be yours. Unapologetically.
