The post is written. My thumb’s over the button.

And then I hear it.

“If you know so much about sales, why didn’t we sell more?”

One problem. Nobody has ever said that to me.

Nobody from that time has said anything at all. Everyone’s gone quiet, which is completely fair, and it leaves plenty of room to write the script myself.

So I do. Every time.

My friends aren’t the audience I’m scared of. They’re incredibly supportive, and they’d cheer if I posted a photo of a matcha. My mum and her friends are still working out what this job exactly is.

It’s the people I used to lead.

Former colleagues. And, most of all, the person who trusted me with the job in the first place.

Am I valid enough to talk about this? Do I have the authority? Who do I think I am?

The phone call

About now I should tell you how I got here.

End of March. I’m about to walk into a client meeting. The phone rings.

“We’re not going to continue with you in the business anymore, Olivia.”

I’m standing there with the phone still in my hand, and the first thing I feel is relief.

The second thing took longer.

On paper, I was the managing director of a region. It’s a great line on a LinkedIn profile.

In practice, I set the company up from zero, by myself. So I was also the person dropping off the deliveries.

Forty degrees in Dubai. A 10kg box in my arms. Trying to look professional and glamorous for the Dubai premium hotels, with sweat dripping down the side of my head.

Not my finest look.

And all I could think was, please don’t ask.

Why is no one helping you? How many people are actually in your team?

I was battling with logistics, and trying to understand the legal part. You do every job.

My husband has a CEO title too, and he’d be the first to tell you his company isn’t Walt Disney.

In the first twelve months of operation, we sold 801,808 units.

Last Sunday, a Reel I posted got 230 views.

Back to the button.

So, why didn’t we sell more?

I’ve never answered this out loud.

So here it is.

I’m grateful for those three years. Someone trusted me to build their presence in the Middle East, and I have a lot of respect for people trying to build a vision into reality. It didn’t work out. And I take full accountability for how the company was led while I was there.

I’d also do things differently. The first is the very thing everyone tells you to start with.

But the one I’ve thought about most is much smaller.

I didn’t ask for help.

There’s something about being a woman and feeling like you don’t have permission to fail. So you don’t say “I’m stuck”. You stay calm, you pick up the next box, and you work it out on your own.

Maybe you know this one. You’re good at what you do, and you still read your own post in somebody else’s voice before you dare press the button. The women at my first dinner club wrote about it in different words: the fear of rejection, not feeling confident online, not knowing how the right people will find them.

We call that a confidence problem. I think we’re waiting for a sign-off. From an old boss, an old team, or someone who’ll tell us we’ve earned the right to talk.

They aren’t coming with a pen.

You can figure shit out if you take full responsibility for yourself, and accept you can only control what you can control. What they think is on the other side of that line. Pressing post is on mine.

You’ve done the work. You don’t need a sign-off.

If your post is still sitting in drafts, that’s the part nobody sees, and it still counts.

That’s the story. I’ve also got the bit I’d only tell you across a table.

What I’d do differently if I started today, the thing that took me three years and a phone call to learn. The five-minute check I run before I post anything that scares me. And my actual numbers this week, including the slightly embarrassing ones.

Pull up a chair. Think of it as funding my next latte, and I’ll pay you back in first steps.

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If there's an idea you haven't said out loud yet, this story is for you.

At 2.43pm on Thursday, I was sitting on the floor in my robe, wrapping books in tissue paper.

Clockwork. Who Not How. This Is Marketing. Book Yourself Solid.

Six books, one for each woman at the table. A couple were for women I knew well. One was for a friend I'd trust with anything. And some were for women I'd never met, and would be meeting for the first time that night.

Inside every cover, a note in my handwriting, answering a sentence she'd written to me.

In a few hours, the first Ownher's Club would sit down to dinner. I'd never hosted one before. Nervous and excited, in exactly equal measure.

By the end of that night, one of those women would write a sentence on a card that I haven't stopped thinking about.

I'll get to it.

The stand

About now I should tell you why I was on the floor wrapping books at all.

For years in my food and drink career, I paid for floor space at trade fairs. The lanyards. The samples. The carpet that smells of a thousand coffees.

Thousands of people walked past our stand. Very few proper conversations happened with anyone who could actually say yes.

I'd fly home with a pile of business cards and call it networking. It cost money. It cost more time. And I kept doing it, because that's how it was done.

What I actually wanted was much smaller. One table. A handful of women saying what they're working on and what's in the way, with people across from them who'd been through it.

I looked for that room for years. I couldn't get invited into it.

So I decided to build it.

Maybe you know this one. Think about the last idea you parked because you couldn't picture exactly who it was for. You told yourself you'd start once you knew.

Back to the floor.

One question

One problem. I'd never met some of them.

So before I booked a single table, I asked a question.

The invitation went out on Instagram. Anyone who wanted a seat filled in a short application, and the line that mattered was this: what's your biggest constraint right now, and what would the night need to give you for it to be worth it?

The answers came back in their own words.

Too much depends on me. I want to carry less. I need my first clients. I want my brand to grow without it becoming another job.

And the moment I read them, something shifted. I stopped planning an event. I started planning for each woman.

I replied to every application myself. Then I sat with the list and asked, for each woman: who else at this table could help her? That became the seating plan.

Then the seat itself. A name card. A calla lily. An oxblood card with a question to open the conversation. Her own menu. And the book, with a note that began with her own sentence. Clockwork for the woman who told us too much depends on her. Book Yourself Solid for the one looking for her first clients.

Every detail decided itself, because I knew exactly who it was for.

Build it for one woman, in detail.

7pm

5.17pm. Black dress, lipstick, one twirl in the mirror.

7pm. The first guest walks in.

The nerves are still there. I execute anyway.

In my head, the same sentence on repeat: create a safe space where ambitious women can open up about what's holding their business back, and leave with one action they can take tomorrow.

We sit down at Leña. One rule for the night: say what you're actually working on and what's actually in the way.

We go around the table. Something that's exciting you. Then the card at your place, with a question written just for you.

One card asks: what's the story behind your studio that you've never posted?

One by one, the constraints come out. Too much depending on one person. Not enough clients yet. A brand that has to grow without becoming another job. And every time, the table leans in. One practical idea. One introduction. No speeches.

Someone shares the thing she's been stuck on for months.

A pause.

Then, from across the table: "I hadn't thought of that."

It's my favourite sentence in the world. And I heard it more than once that night.

The card

Friday morning. Back at my desk, typing up what each woman wrote about the one thing she was taking home.

And here's the sentence I promised you. One of the women wrote:

"Attention is what makes things grow. Maybe I can do 5 things at the same time, but that doesn't mean I have to."

I read it. Then I read it again.

Because that was my whole night. I'd spent years doing five things at once at trade fairs. The evening only worked because I put all my attention on one woman at a time.

Then the Stories started.

"I personally find it so hard as an entrepreneur in Dubai to connect with female founders that are supportive rather than those that only want something transactional."

"It was absolutely amazing to meet women who think the same way I do, have same fears but taking actions."

That second one stopped me. Same fears, but taking actions. That's the room I'd been looking for all those years at the trade fairs.

The new name

A few weeks ago I was curious and confused. Lots of interests, lots of tabs open, waiting to feel clear before I started.

Thursday taught me it works the other way round. Clarity came from starting.

So here's the clarity. On Thursday I built the room I couldn't get into. Now I want to build it bigger, for the women who'll never sit at that table in Dubai.

This letter is now OWNHER.

It's the ecosystem for women to go from idea to execution. The inner work that gets you started, and the practical skills that get it done: AI, money, systems, and the people a couple of steps ahead.

The name is the point. Own her: owning your ideas, and being accountable for making them real. Nobody's coming to do it for us, and honestly, that's the freeing part.

And it's for you, if you've got a thousand ideas and everyone online seems 20,000 steps ahead. If there's nobody near you who's done the thing you're quietly thinking about. I'm about two steps ahead. Every Sunday, I'll show you both.

OWNHER opens properly soon, and I want you in the room early. Pull up a chair, and you'll be the first through the door.

Get early access to OWNHER

Where I'm placing my bets

That one night made me braver about where I'm placing my bets.

On rooms. Small, in-person, made for the women in them. Connection with ambitious, skilled women is becoming a new kind of luxury. I watched it happen on Thursday.

On conversation. "I hadn't thought of that" only happens when someone's really listening. The more AI-numbed we all get, the more that will matter.

On outcomes. A trade fair with high footfall no longer cuts it. If someone gives you her evening, she should leave a step closer to her goal.

On the details. A book chosen for her constraint. A question written just for her. Plenty of people are handing their thinking to AI. I'm betting on the women who keep their own creativity, use AI to make it go further, and obsess over the person in front of them.

And the bet I'm placing on you: your idea gets clearer the moment you build it for one person.

Here's what that looked like for me, as simply as I can put it:

1. I asked each woman what was in the way, and wrote down her answer in her words.

2. I built the smallest version of the night around those words. Nobody else's.

3. I went back and asked what helped.

Back to the floor

Thursday afternoon. Six books on the floor of my flat, wrapped in tissue paper.

That's how small it started.

If there's an idea of yours that's still wrapped up, still a note on your phone, still waiting for the right moment, that's the floor stage. Nobody posts it, and it still counts.

You don't need the whole room yet. You need one woman, and one question.

Build it for one woman, in detail.

With kindness,
Liv x

What's the idea you keep circling, and who's the first woman it would help? Tell me in the comments.

If this one landed, you can fund my next latte. I'll pay you back in first steps.

Fund my next latte

Send this to your friend with a thousand tabs

PS. Want to take the first step with me this week? Pick one idea from the thousand. Think of one woman it could help, a friend, a colleague, someone in your DMs, and ask her: "What's the biggest thing in the way of this for you right now?" Write her answer down word for word, then reply and tell me what she said. Build it for one woman, in detail. And send this to the friend with the most ideas and the fewest people to say them to.

I turn 35 today.

34 was a lot. I got married, the big highlight. I got pregnant, and I lost my job. We lost our embryo. I set up a company, and I’m getting rejected while I build it. I’m in my second month of building something of my own, and some days it still feels like the first.

What 34 kept showing me is that life doesn’t take turns. Good and bad, fun and serious, sad and happy, excitement and boredom. They all live in the same hemisphere, often on the same day.

So at 35 I’m lowering one expectation: that life should sit at one extreme at a time. I’d rather welcome all of it, and keep building the resilience to hold it.

That’s what freedom means to me now. Resilience. Coming back quickly to the baseline of who I am, whatever life throws at me, and whatever the bigger risks I take for myself and my work bring with them.

Financial freedom matters to me, and I’m deeply grateful for what I already have. The thing underneath it is ownership. Of who I am, and the woman I’m becoming. Of turning up as the best version of myself as often as I can. Of the mistakes I make along the way. And yes, some extra cash, to back new ambitions and invest in something I believe in.

Today the first rooms of the Founding 35 open. It’s my birthday present to 35 women with an idea in their tabs.

What’s one thing you’d like to own this year?

Reply with it, if you’d like to.

With kindness 🤍

How many tabs did you open in your head this weekend?

Maybe the course. Maybe the shop, the move, the conversation with your manager you keep rehearsing in the shower. Ten ideas, ten tabs, and this morning every one of them got minimised so Monday could have the screen.

If that’s you today, you’re not alone. I’ve had tabs like that too, and each Monday I told myself the same thing: not now. I call it the not-now story, the reason we give ourselves every single time.

Nothing here asks you to start anything today. This week runs on one question. What would I start if I gave myself the first hour?

For now, just notice which tab you keep coming back to. The one you open even when you’re tired.

Reply with the name of that tab. One word is plenty.

With kindness 🤍

There’s an idea you’ve had open in a tab for a while now. Maybe longer than you’d like to admit.

You know the one. You come back to it on Sunday evenings, when the week ahead is already sitting on your chest. You add a note to it, maybe a screenshot. Then Monday arrives, and the tab stays open next to all the others. I call that a thousand tabs open: all the ideas, none of them started.

Not every tab is a business. Some are a course you’ve half outlined in your Notes app. A move you’ve researched at midnight. A career change you’ve talked through over wine so many times your friends could pitch it for you.

If that’s you tonight, this letter is for you. Because I think what’s missing for most of us is one hour, and someone beside us while we use it. I know, because for a long time I didn’t have mine.

I turn 35 on Tuesday. Five months ago, on 31 May, I had my last day running a company for someone else. If you read my first letter, you know the decision was partly made for me. I left with about €8,000 in savings and an idea.

That €8,000 came from a Spanish salary, and I was used to living month to month. Walking away from a secure income, whatever its size, is its own kind of risk. But becoming financially free, and building something of my own, mattered more to me than the safety. And I believe in myself. I’ve come through enough hard things in my life to know I can trust myself to figure this solopreneur thing out. Still, the €8,000 felt like a ticking clock. I had to get my act together, and quickly.

I knew strategy. I knew how to build a company from zero, because I’d done it, in the Middle East, for someone else. What I didn’t know was how to be consistent with content. How to make content, and products, that genuinely add something to someone’s life. How to put myself out there on camera, and then actually communicate once I was there. Those were the things that could quietly stop me.

And there was only one of me. No team, no budget, no spare hours to be bad at something new.

So I did what a lot of us do with a thousand tabs open. I went to the tab I already knew how to work in. With AI doing the heavy lifting, I built a guide for food and drink brands entering the Gulf: twelve sections and nineteen templates, in about six weeks. I’m still proud of it. But I built every page of it before a single person had bought it. Six weeks of a small runway went into the part I was already good at, and almost none into the parts that scared me.

What changed was simple, and a little uncomfortable. The same tools that built the guide could take the heavy lifting off everything else. Now they test my ideas honestly, draft in my voice, edit my videos and keep my numbers. Which meant, for the first time, I had hours I’d never had. And I started spending them on the things I’m weakest at. A Reel I’m half proud of. Showing up on camera when I’d rather not. This letter, every Sunday.

Every idea deserves its first hour. Mine finally got it.

Maybe you know this feeling. You have the idea. You have the brain for it. What you’ve never had is one hour that isn’t already spoken for.

When I started asking why so few of the women around me use these tools, I found something that stopped me. Women are about a fifth less likely than men to use generative AI, and the gap has stopped closing.¹

If you’ve ever said “I’m just not techy”, I’d gently put that sentence down. Most of us were simply never given the hour to sit down and try. That part isn’t in your control. What you do with one hour this week is.

I used to tell myself I’d start properly when I had more time, more money and more confidence on camera. That’s the not-now story, the reason we give ourselves every single time, and I told mine beautifully. On Tuesday I turn 35, and I’m still beginning. Honestly, that’s the part I like most.

So for my birthday, I’m giving away the hour I needed. The Founding 35 is a free beta of what I’ve built, for 35 women, one for every year. Rooms 0 to 2 open on Tuesday 20 October. A new room opens every Tuesday after that, and every other Tuesday at 7.30pm Dubai time we get on a call together (recorded, if you’re asleep). If there’s an idea sitting in one of your tabs, your link to save a place is at the end of this letter.

If someone had handed me that first hour five months ago, I know exactly how I’d have spent it. I call it the First Hour: three questions, in order, about sixty minutes with a cup of tea.

Below, for paid subscribers, I’m sharing all three. Then my own answers to them for the idea I’m launching on Tuesday, the messy version, so you can see what “good enough” looks like. And the exact prompt I paste into Claude when I want a kindly honest verdict on an idea in about ten minutes, so it doesn’t just tell you what you want to hear. It’s the hour I wish someone had handed me. If you’ve been keeping an idea in a tab, this is where it gets its first hour.

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Is there a version of you that only exists because nobody’s asked her to change?

Monday has a way of pulling us straight back into her. Same commute, same inbox, same answer to “how are you?”. It’s comfortable, and some mornings comfortable feels a lot like stuck.

If that’s you today, you’re not alone. I used to love being…

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Has anyone ever told you that you haven’t changed a bit?

Maybe at a reunion, a wedding, or over a glass of wine with someone who knew you at twenty-two. You smile and take it as a compliment. Then on the way home a quieter thought follows you: is this it? Am I still exactly who I was?

If that thought sounds familiar, this letter is for you. I spent last week in Rome and Florence, and a girl made of marble changed how I hear that compliment.

For years, I loved it. “You’re still the same as always.” I wore it like a badge. I thought staying the same meant I’d stayed true. Loyal to my values, steady, the person everyone could count on.

I used to travel for months at a time, and coming home to that line felt reassuring. It meant people still saw me the way they wanted to see me.

Here’s what I got wrong. I’d mixed up my values with my shape. I hope my values never change. Kindness, honesty, showing up for the people I love. Those are my roots. But I’d let the roots decide how far the branches were allowed to grow.

When I married my husband, we both said something that has stayed with me. We promised to love the person each of us is, and the person each of us is becoming. Becoming. It was in the promise from the first day. I just hadn’t made the same promise to myself.

Then, on Thursday afternoon in the Galleria Borghese, I stood in front of Bernini’s Apollo and Daphne.

The story comes from Ovid. Daphne is running, and to be free she asks to be changed. Bernini carves the exact second it happens. Her fingers are turning into laurel leaves. Bark is climbing up her legs. Her toes are becoming roots. And her face is still completely hers.

I walked round it four or five times (my camera roll is the proof). What stopped me was that she’s halfway through the change and still recognisably herself. Same roots. New branches.

And the part that gave me hope: the laurel she became went on to crown poets and winners for centuries. The thing she turned into became the symbol of achievement.

Maybe you know this feeling. You’re not who you were five years ago, and you’re not yet who you’re becoming. It can feel a lot like being lost. I’ve started to think it’s simply the middle of the statue.

Right now I’m in the deepest phase of change I’ve felt in years. Three things are shifting, and I’m sharing them because I suspect at least one of them is shifting for you too.

1. I’m getting fearless about trying new things. Small experiments. If one doesn’t work, I’ve learned something.

2. I’m releasing myself from the expectations and approval of people whose opinion I don’t value. That one’s quieter, and it takes practice.

3. I’m letting myself be ambitious, even audacious, about big professional and financial goals. Out loud.

None of those started on a plane. Travel has always been a huge source of inspiration for me. It reminds me the world is big, and that there’s a story behind everything we see. But I came home asking: how do I keep this feeling on an ordinary Tuesday, with no Bernini in sight?

My answer, so far, is the fourth C. Curiosity. Its question at the end of the day is simple. Did I learn or explore something new today?

Curiosity is how change happens without a plane ticket. Every new thing you try grows a branch. Daphne changes finger by finger, and so can we.

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Both of those are true. It took me a long time to understand how.

I was building a company from zero in the Middle East. The expectations were enormous, the support was thin, I was building most of it alone, and the shareholders wanted results I couldn’t always control. Earlier in my career I’d been given awards for “best energy”, the person who makes work feel brighter, and I brought that with me. When someone’s day went wrong, they often ended up at my desk, and I was good at lowering the temperature. We’d slow down, sort what was theirs to control from what wasn’t, and find the next step together.

Then I’d go home and lie awake.

Maybe for you it isn’t a company. Maybe it’s a job you’ve quietly outgrown, or a relationship that feels further away than it used to, or a future you can’t quite picture anymore. Giving everything out and having nothing come back in. If that’s you, keep reading.

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I’m saying it plainly, because for a long time I didn’t. I often worried about how it would land for the person hearing it. Feared the question, “How did he pass away?” I didn’t want the person on the other side to feel uncomfortable, so for a while I would invent a different motive or say nothing at all. But, today, the lessons learned from my Father’s passing have become too important not to share.

In the beginning, whilst trying to make sense of our loss, I would ask myself how someone with so much light could lose sight of his value in this world, in our world. But, over the 17 years of searching for an answer, I have been led to explore a much greater question. What is a fulfilled life and how do we live it?

My dad worked at a bank in the north east of England for over 40 years. He was a hard worker and fiercely loyal to that company. His job was his pride and his purpose, a badge of honour, and a big part of who he was. Then the financial crash came in 2007 and 2008, and the company’s future and his security went with it. He took early retirement. Quickly, I watched his light dim. Quickly, his days got long and quiet. Then came a dark, heavy February morning that took him from us.

A few weeks later I was standing at my bedroom window. It was a beautiful, bright day, and I was exhausted from crying, tired in the way only grief makes you tired. Cars kept passing. I remember thinking how strange it was that we could be inside this house of insurmountable pain and, for everyone driving past, life carried on.

Something shifted at that window. Maybe it was a divine sign, maybe it was my dad. What it gave me was a choice. I could stay in the depths of it, or I could get up, get out there, and live in light.

I chose the second. A dear friend says I’ve “been chemically wired to love and light” ever since.

Here’s where I got it wrong, though. Choosing light at 17 didn’t mean I’d learned the whole lesson. Years later I spent three years building a company from zero in the Middle East, and I let the job become who I was. I got caught up. I forgot my own perspective. I forgot what I’d already lived through, and what it had taught me. I’d watched what it cost someone I loved to have a job hold his sense of self, and I still handed mine over to a title and a company that wasn’t my own. It cost me my sleep, handfuls of my hair, and a nervous system that never switched off.

That was the turn. Losing myself in a title showed me where fulfilment can’t live: in one place you could lose in a single phone call. So, having lost my SPARK, sense of joy and vitality, I came back to my life’s question: What does a life of fulfilment look like to me now, in this season of my life?

Then, lying in bed, 10.30pm on a Tuesday night, the answer arrived, and it was simpler than I’d ever expected. Seventeen years of asking, with an open mind, landed all at once.

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It’s Friday. However the week went, you got here.

The week ran on one idea. Resilience is freedom. Hard things will keep arriving, sometimes in the same week as the good ones, and none of them ask permission. The freedom is in knowing you have a way back.

Underneath it sat one question. When something knocks me over, what’…

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Today is the step. Fifteen minutes, a notebook, and one thing you feel stuck on.

In this order:

1. Name the thing. One line. The decision, the situation, the thing that keeps looping. (2 minutes)

2. Write the question you keep asking about it. The one on repeat. Write it exactly as it sounds in your head. (3 minutes)

3. Ch…

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Think of the hardest thing you’ve come through in the last few years. The one you weren’t sure you’d get past. You did get past it, because you’re reading this.

So what did you actually do? Leave out what you think you should have done, and write down what you did.

Maybe you called someone.…

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You’ve heard it. Discipline is freedom. I lived by it for years.

What I’ve learned is different. Resilience is freedom.

Hard things will keep arriving. That part isn’t in your control. What is in your control is knowing you have a way back to your baseline, however long it takes, so you can act from calm rather than panic…

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Before the week starts asking things of you, I want to name something.

Some weeks carry a good thing and a painful thing at the same time. A promotion and a parent who’s unwell. A wedding to plan and a job that’s wobbling. Something you’ve wanted for years arriving in the same month something else falls apart.

We tend to think we have to pic…

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That was Tuesday, at what was meant to be a typical doctor’s appointment. I was ten weeks pregnant. It’s called a missed miscarriage, which is a quiet name for something that isn’t quiet at all. Since then I’ve had a small surgery to remove the embryo, and I am no longer pregnant.

I feel strong writing that today. On Tuesday I did not. Tuesday was a very hard day for me and my husband, and I let it be one.

For context, let me give you a summary of my past six months:

I got fired. I got married. I got pregnant. I had a miscarriage. I got career confused. I set up my company. I felt lost. I’m finding my path again.

If you read that list twice, you’ll notice the good and the painful don’t take turns. They sit right next to each other. That’s what I’ve come to understand about life, maybe for the first time properly. Immense joy and great pain live side by side, in the same season, sometimes in the same week. They aren’t mutually exclusive. They ebb and flow.

And I think that, as women in our thirties, we are currently being told a very particular story about this season of life. That we’re confused. That we’re lost. That we don’t know which way to go, professionally or personally. Get married, don’t get married. Have children, have a career. And if you have decided you want children, for so many of us the road there is long and painful, and it’s often walked in silence, with shame or embarrassment or disappointment carried quietly beside it. (Thank goodness we’re starting to talk about it more, ladies.)

So I want to give us some grace here. We are not confused. We are condensing a series of decisions that finally weigh something into a highly concentrated period - Our thirties.

For a long time I lived by a line I’m sure you’ve heard: discipline is freedom. And when things broke, I went looking for the definitive answer. Why did this happen? What is the right move? I wanted certainty before I let myself go anywhere. But what happens when the answer doesn’t come? In the hard moments, it rarely does.

What changed things for me was the question. An answer closes a door. A question leaves the room open, space to reflect and explore without limits, and that openness is where the direction actually comes from. The question led me to understand what had happened. Understanding brought me to acceptance. Acceptance brought peace. And peace is the only place I’ve ever been able to move forward from.

That’s why, over time, what I’ve learned is this. Resilience is freedom.

Not because hard things stop happening. They don’t. Because what helps is getting back to your baseline so you can act from a place of calm. And calm, I believe, is a superpower. If you can find peace and acceptance whatever situation you’re in, if you can move from feeling like it’s all happening to you to building something from it, from seeing mostly the dark to seeing mostly the light, life gets freer.

Here’s the process I find helps me. I call it my 24-Hour Turnaround.

1. Feel it. The emotional release comes first, and it’s completely valid. I don’t skip it and I don’t rush it.

2. Ask. Once the first wave has passed, I start asking. What actually happened? What am I feeling? What can I control here, and what can’t I? No demand for a definitive answer. Just the questions.

3. Accept. Reflecting on those questions is what gets me to acceptance. And acceptance, whatever the situation, is what brings the peace.

4. Move. From peace, the next step becomes visible. Usually a small one.

One thing I need to say plainly. Twenty-four hours is when the turnaround starts for me. It is not when grief is finished. If you’re inside a loss right now, this is a door for when you’re ready, not a deadline.

I’ve been running some version of this since I lost my father at 17. Every setback since, including those of the past six months, has made me a better, higher version of myself.

So, on Tuesday, a doctor couldn’t find a heartbeat. Today I’m sitting here with the grief and the gratitude both still in the room, and neither one is asking the other to leave. I let myself fall apart, I asked my questions, and I came back to calm.

Resilience is freedom.

With kindness 🤍

PS. If you are experiencing a version of grief this week, I am sending you a warm hug. And to all the women on their maternity journey, I see you and feel you. The road is long and tumultuous but, hopeful. You are not walking alone.

PPS. To our little seed, thank you for showing us we can be parents and love abundantly. For that, we are deeply grateful 🤍

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