Finding Strength in Vulnerability: How My Startup Dreams Were Disrupted By Personal Crisis

It was an exciting time. I was in love and launching Quoka after coming up with my first ever go-to-market strategy. I was pumped up and ready. Let’s go was my mantra. I had the vision, the drive, and the means. Unstoppable. Within a few months everything started to crumble and I didn’t recognize the woman in the mirror.

The man that I loved and thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with turned out to have a drug addiction that he was hiding from everyone that cared for him. I only found out after he got too high and started spiraling, waking me up in the middle of the night. His behavior scared me and when I went downstairs to get him some water I saw the drugs.

The Unseen Battle

Once his secret was out the drug problem got worse. Not being familiar with drugs, I had no idea how to handle the situation. A cycle began. After I went to bed he would get high. Then he would wake me up in the middle of the night, and apologize in the morning, swearing he would stop, and not follow through. My work suffered, I was tired during the day, was having trouble focusing, and found it difficult to be there for my team.

The days blended together in a fog. I was depleted in energy and my vision was gone. Nothing seemed important and I was frustrated with myself, my circumstances, and with the techniques people were suggesting to handle the situation. Addiction sucks. My friends and family were deeply concerned for me, and with their help I somehow managed to get myself out of the situation.

I moved home — like literally back in with my mom, and sunk into a deep depression. For months the only things that made me smile were TikTok and my dog.

I would never be “myself” again because I was changing. I felt there was no way that I would be able to look at the world the same way I did before. I had extreme guilt for leaving the relationship. I worried constantly that he was going to overdose and die. I judged myself for leaving because what kind of partner does that? What did that say about me and my integrity? At the same time, I knew leaving had saved my life.

Because here’s the other thing about addiction: As much as I didn’t recognize myself during this time, I also didn’t recognize him. This was not the man I’d fallen in love with and made promises to.

To make matters worse, during this time I was assaulted, which caused extreme body tension that I am still working through to this day. And, of course, life doesn’t stop just because I needed time to recover. There were deaths in my family and crises big and small that required my attention and presence, just when I had the least access to those internal resources.

Navigating the Darkness

I’m not writing this because I want people to feel sorry for me, or because it is part of my healing process, although talking about it has been. I’m writing this because I know there are other founders that are going through tough times and not talking about it and thinking that they should be able to deliver.

For some reason we do this. We talk about the good times, and go radio silent when things are not going well. I want to know that I am not alone. And I want you, whoever you are, to know you are not alone.

In my opinion, we’re not sharing enough about what has helped us, or what help and support we need. Instead we’re feeling ashamed for not posting on social media, and apologizing for not responding to emails. We’re feeling like failures, wondering if we should quit, because we’re not seeing the results we hoped for. At the same time, we’re feeling frustrated because we know all the non-work things going on are impacting our ability to be at our best.

I’m not going to do that anymore. I want to talk about what helped me, in case it might help others, and I want to do business in a way that honors all of who we are — our messy, amazing, struggling human selves.

What I tried

Therapy

I tried it. I’ve tried it before, too. It can be helpful in some cases but for me only was way late into the process, after I tried many other things. It’s vital to find a good fit, it’s expensive if if you don’t have insurance, which most founders don’t and it doesn’t produce results quickly enough because a therapist needs a lot of context about your life. And, let’s face it, after three years of global trauma, there are not enough therapists out there for all the struggling humans. When it comes to talk therapy, I find it useful for some situations, just like talking with my family, friends, or God/myself.

Drugs

I’m not a huge fan. I like being solidly in my head and my body, and, as a spiritual person who is rooted in nature, these chemically altered substances, don’t appeal. I know that there are tons of people that believe antidepressants have saved their lives. If you’re one of those people, I’m so glad you found something that works and that you’re still here, living your best life, I hope. Up until this dark time my drug use had been limited to coffee, tobacco, marijuana, alcohol, and the occasional Tylenol. I did try some other things during this time because I was desperate to discover new tools to bring to these new challenges I was facing.

The first thing I tried was St. John’s Wort. I started off with taking 900 mg per day in three 300 mg doses. It worked. I felt better day to day. I was able to get out of bed and wasn’t crying all the time. But in the back of my mind I wondered if I was truly better or if it was just the pills. I was afraid to stop taking them and find out.

I took them for about 6 months. By this time I was back at my home and no longer watching TikTok for hours on end. I was checking email regularly, and felt inspired to do some house projects. I talked to a colleague about my depression, without going into detail on the cause, and they suggested that I try micro-dosing mushrooms.

After exploring the benefits of mycology with the administrator, I committed to doing a 90 day protocol. My administrator helped me choose a specific blend, talked me through what I was trying to achieve, and put me on a schedule of 5 days on and 2 days off. The mushrooms came in little pills similar to any vitamin. I had breath-work and journaling instructions to follow as well, and my administrator was available to me by phone, text message, and group meetings to discuss things that came up.

I stopped taking the St John’s Wort while trying the mushroom blend, and the results from the protocol were incredible. I was brought back into a flow similar to the me that I was used to, and gained a deeper level of appreciation for our world. But I still was suffering from body tension and I knew that whatever changes I was going through were not over. My entire vision for my future was gone, and, for the first time in my life, I had no idea where I was headed.

Life had become day by day for me. I no longer counted on my body feeling strong or being able to focus for hours, and I continued to experiment with healing modalities. I previously had lived in a pain-free body, and I wanted to find a way to rid my body of this ongoing pain.

Bodywork and other things

I tried acupuncture, which was great, but only relieved me temporarily. I changed my diet. I already get massages regularly, but I pumped those up, increasing the frequency. I tried visualizations, meditations, journaling, working out differently, balms, creams, baths — you name it. As my desperation grew I started looking at healing retreats at some of the centers around the world. I couldn’t afford it, nor could I afford taking more time away from my company. The thought of missing more work was awful, but living like this was pretty awful, too.

And then, by some miracle, my paths crossed with a healer who has provided me with the single most effective treatment that has started to give me some real relief. It’s called Stretch Therapy. As of the date of this post, I’ve done four sessions. In the first one, I cried for 45 minutes when a leg muscle was stretched. I mean, a real cry. Snot levels I had no idea were possible were achieved that day!

Gross I know, but I love a good cry. I’m known to be a bit of a dramatic person, but crying has not ever been easy. It’s a release that I value and can enjoy experiencing. After the second session I felt like I’d had an intense workout or maybe like I got drunk! It was wild. In the third session, I cried again, this time when my hip muscles were stretched.

It was at that moment that I knew with absolute clarity what was causing the tension and pain in my body. The assault I had experienced a year and a half ago had embedded itself into my legs, and my body was remembering it. Without thinking, I blurted this realization out during the session. It was as though, having made this connection, I needed to explain it to someone else right away. I don’t really understand why. They were the first person that I told what had happened to me.

As soon as the words were out, I immediately apologized for what I had done, dumping on them like that. But they were graceful, and let me know that it was part of the therapy. My next session, I was able to truly relax and go into my own body. I felt like I was taking an active role in releasing the places where these memories were stored and causing me pain — my cells and muscles.

Breaking The Silence & Breaking Through

Once I vocalized it to my Stretch Therapist, I was able to start talking to other people about what happened to me. I’ve told my mom, my best friend, some others, and now YOU!

Full disclosure, it took me a lot of time to get to this place. My assault took place in Summer 2021, I wrote this article in Fall 2022 and it sat in my drafts until now, September 2023. I finally have the courage and the clarity to talk publicly. I’m able to explain about what happened to me without getting upset and further traumatizing myself.

Entrepreneurship Unmasked

I’ve always been open about my entrepreneurial journey, and I think it’s important that I honor the fluidness between what happens in my personal life, and how it intertwines with my work life. Because, for me, like for all of us, the things that happen to me anywhere in my life do have an effect on how I perform at work, with my family, with my friends, with myself, with everything. Mental health is everything. As I continue on this blessed journey, I’m making some changes in how I work. For example, I’ve taken my first real vacation in years.

At the end of the day, there is no drug you can take. There is no therapy that will fix you. No one is going to say something that shifts your mindset so dramatically that you now live a perfect life with no ups and downs. The key is, having a toolbox that you can pull from when life does throw you a curveball that supports you moving through.

Untold Struggles

Furthermore, I believe we need a serious examination on how we support each other mentally. How open we are to having these conversations, listening to others, exploring solutions, and being open minded to others experiences without judgment.

What has happened to me happened to me. Will it make me ineligible for some pitch competitions, and accelerators because I took almost 24 months to get my shit back together and have not made the progress professionally that I could have? Yes. Will some investors never invest in me because of my story and journey, yes.

But I can’t care about that. Because nothing I do will change it and at the end of the day it doesn’t matter. Being an entrepreneur is about making it work regardless of the circumstances as messed up as that sounds. You’re lucky if you don’t compromise your values on your way to the top. Many do, and at least I haven’t done that.

Maybe a small number of people will read this article and care about what happened to me. I look forward to the day that the majority of people care about what is happening to founders while they are on the journey, not just when they have gotten to their destination. If they get there. Remember, for every successful entrepreneur you hear about, there are a dozens more “failures” who went through just as much hardship, and made tough choices. It’s a freaking graveyard out there.

To those ones, the ones that have given up, I see you, I respect you, and I’m going to honor you as I continue on. My story is not done, and for at least the 10th time in my life I feel like I’ve come so far, and yet I’m just getting started. I’m so grateful. Let’s go, together.