The Night Everything Felt Too Heavy
There was a night I almost shut the whole thing down.
I don't talk about this much. But if this series is supposed to be honest, it needs to be in here.
It was late. I was tired, in the specific way you get tired when you are running a business and a household and worrying about a kid who is far away and pretending to everyone around you that you have it handled.
I had made a mistake — a very costly mistake.
It was something simple, something fixable — and instead of just getting to work and fixing it, I just sat there and thought:
who do you think you are?
The Voice That Shows Up When You're Vulnerable
That voice.
You know that voice.
It is not loud. It is quiet and certain and it picks the exact moment when your defenses are down.
You are not a business person.
You are not a designer.
You are a mom who made some shirts.
Nobody asked you to do this.
You could just stop.
I sat with that for longer than I want to admit.
The Voicemail I Still Keep Saved
And then I thought about the message I had gotten earlier that week from my daughter, the voice mail, saying,
“that’s soo cool that you are making shirts. I’m so proud of you for getting that out there.”
I listened to the voicemail again.
I got choked up again – she was proud of me.
I was so proud of her.
I still have that voicemail – it’s saved forever on my phone.
What I Learned About Doubt
Here is what I learned that night:
Doubt is not a sign you are doing the wrong thing.
Sometimes it is a sign you are doing something that actually matters — something with enough weight to it that it feels scary to keep going.
The things worth building are the ones that scare you a little.
Why I Kept Going
I kept going.
I am still going.
And on the nights that voice comes back — I replay the voicemail.
It always works.
-- Janae