Practicing stillness and realness

I gave birth to my baby Heal Before You Hustle (HBYH) in May of 2022. At this time, I didn’t believe that I was ready to embark on this journey of becoming a founder or business owner.  I was fresh out of my state of deep solitude for my mental health and healing. I had been sitting on this concept of “one must heal before they get out and start hustling,” but I still had no idea what Heal Before You Hustle even was.

At the beginning of May, I scheduled a phone call with a girl named Drew whom I had never met or spoken to before after she reached out to me on social media.  Now, like I said I didn’t know Drew but I did know that she recently launched her non-profit Injoy, she had a festival coming up, and her best friend, Sierra Jenkins, had just been shot and killed at a bar in downtown Norfolk. The phone call happened, and it was so pure. 

Drew asked me if I could be a vendor at her event for life coaching so that I could speak on mental health. Before she asked me this, we spoke about our shared experience in the mental health field and our love for helping people. We also agreed that there had to be another way of spreading mental health awareness without the traditional ways of practicing in our career field. Drew spoke about Sierra and how she had been her light and the reason she was moving forward with the production of her event, not even two months after her passing. 

I could tell that Drew was working through her pain and as much as I did not want to get up and speak, I agreed to my role in Injoy fest in hopes to be the support to someone with similar interests. She was an example of true resiliency. 

I never would have imagined the amount of love and opportunities I received from just showing up and doing my part for Injoy fest.  To the naked eye, I appear to be someone with great confidence, but what many don’t know is that at the time I was very self-conscious. And after several months of cutting off the world and sitting in solitude, I was relearning to interact with the world as a whole new person again.

After the festival, people reached out for services, speaking engagements, and workshop opportunities. I scrambled to get my business together so that these opportunities would not slip from under me. I could feel the pressure of anxiety and failure coming back rapidly after working so hard to get out of that state of living.  I sat and processed what I was feeling and decided that I wasn’t going to rush my process. I continued to nurture my baby until she was ready to be presented to the world. I worked hard in silence, asked for help, wrote down every idea, made a plan, and revised that plan probably 100 times. 

I attended meeting after meeting and saved money to invest in rebranding and a website. I even spent 800 dollars that I did not have just to attend the Mighty Dream Forum because I knew that investment would help me gain so much more in the end. I struggled, I prayed, I cried, I turned down opportunities, I sat out on all social events, and during this uncomfortable time, I stayed focused and still. 

I understood that if I took this time to be still and set a steady foundation, I would be able to represent myself and my brand in such a way that represents my true capabilities and authenticity in one. Stillness taught me to not make impulsive decisions, to pray for the answers, and to recognize that as long as I stay open-minded and continue working everything will align without me having to try so hard. And with all of that being said, I will forever be practicing stillness and realness.