#27: Trust.
When I shared my newest project Self-ish Stories, I briefly mentioned my why behind this work. I shared that I believe we find ourselves in others and I shared that my own story was rewritten after countless conversations with other women who had reinvented themselves in the midst of motherhood, therefore giving me permission to the same.
What I failed to mention was how one story in particular has guided me these past few years. An unexpected phone call from a friend and fellow small business owner led to an impromptu conversation way back in October 2020, 7 months after the pandemic hit and nearly a year before I closed my own business.
When Chelsea Day called to let me know that she had made the heartbreaking decision to close her brick and mortar business, I immediately knew that I wanted and needed to capture her story and her words. I didn’t hesitate asking if she would be brave enough to sit down with me to share where she was at and what she was going through, although I will be the first to admit I did not fully understand the impact her story would eventually have on my own life.
We met 5 days before she officially closed her doors as I wanted to offer her the space to process what she was going through in real time. I hoped our time together might offer her a chance to reflect and find some strength in her story and I think deep down I knew that her story needed to eventually be shared. At the very last minute I pulled out my phone and asked her for permission to voice record our conversation on the premise that I might do something with it ‘someday’ and I guess you could say that today is finally that day.
On that original voice recording I asked Chelsea to share her perspective, her words, and her advice so that ‘someone, somewhere’ might feel less alone, less stuck. I obviously had no idea how much I would eventually need her words, and I had no idea how often I would return to her story in the midst of my own heartbreak.
I said it in the original conversation and I will say it again here, what is meant for you will always find a way. Below I have woven bits and pieces of Chelsea’s original interview mixed with a few parts of our recent follow up conversation. Her story is especially powerful since it highlights the ongoing choices women must make regarding their work and kids. It also highlights the amount of time it has taken me to find the courage to share other women’s stories and words.
In our original conversation I said, “I believe it is women’s jobs to see each other because nobody else is going to see us.” When we can share who we are and what we are going through, it gives other people permission to do the same and that is what I am trying to do here, offering women a window into each other’s lives so we can see each other and ourselves a little more clearly. I hope you find parts of yourself in her story and I hope you find the strength to continue on your path no matter how many detours, roadblocks, or hurdles stand in your way.
This photo was taken of Chelsea the day she came into my then office to share her story, October 2020.
Prior to having kids, Chelsea was a TV producer in NYC for over a decade, she worked herself to the end before moving to the Bay Area in need of a serious reset. Shortly thereafter she found herself in Chinese Medicine School and became a Massage Therapist, running a private practice in San Francisco and also working at Refuge Spa in Carmel. She had studied to become an Acupuncturist, but shortly before graduation, she became pregnant after being told a viable pregnancy would be unlikely.
Her second daughter was born a year later and returning to school, "wouldn't have been impossible, but what it looked like felt impossible." She expressed how returning to Bodywork didn't feel available to her during those early years, as becoming a full-time mother had left her touched out.
Instead Chelsea found herself assisting her sister in growing a seasonal business in Wellfleet, MA called BOL of Love. She described herself as process oriented and she helped streamline her sisters business from afar. The more she was involved in the business, the more she saw the through line between her education in Chinese Medicine, eventually applying her knowledge to many of the BOL recipes. She decided to partner with her sister and launch a second BOL of Love location in Marin County - after 8 months of permitting and construction, she brought her vision to life at the Mill Valley Lumberyard and opened her doors on April 20, 2019.
Part of her decision to launch her business while simultaneously mothering two young girls was motivated by her own realization that a piece of herself was dormant while she was staying home with her kids. She said she didn’t know how to revive that side of herself if she wasn’t working on a major project or growing toward something, so while challenging this giant leap felt right.
Not even a full year later the pandemic hit and flipped her life and her business upside down. In our original conversation, we talked about the pressures of running brick and mortar spaces in the early pandemic days and we commiserated about band-aiding our businesses with constant pivots which she likened to the ‘pivot cannonball,’ so many of us pivoted so quickly and so often at the beginning of the pandemic that we lost sight of what we were trying to create and the businesses we were trying to save.
So many of us pivoted so quickly and so often at the beginning of the pandemic that we lost sight of what we were trying to create and the businesses we were trying to save.
She said “I was so desperate for someone to come through our doors to keep the business afloat, but equally terrified for people to come through the doors because they could get a young staff member sick.” To complicate things even further, she had to combat rising costs along with food shortages and eventually came to the realization that the only way her business was going to survive was if she was there 100% of the time, without paying herself for her time.
Enjoying a BOL from my empty co-working space while brainstorming ways to keep my business afloat in April 2020.
Meanwhile, she had two young kids at home who were both out of school and without childcare, the obvious choice for her family was for her husband to keep working because they were self-funding the business which left them with one of two options: either pay her employees $15 to cover for her at work or pay a babysitter $20 to cover for her at home. The pandemic provided very few ‘good’ options for mothers.
Chelsea and her girls at the farmer’s market shopping for BOL in August 2020, she was quite literally ‘doing it all.’
When the fires hit California in the Fall of 2020, the wildfire smoke forced all of us inside, and Chelsea had to pivot her life and her business once more. Her 3 year old daughter was born premature and the smoke from the fires was affecting her lungs, she described the pain she felt in not being able to protect her child and her family ultimately made the decision for her husband and kids to seek refuge with her mom, a retired preschool teacher living in Massachusetts, while she remained behind to fight for her business.
Ominous skies over BOL and the Mill Valley Lumberyard the day the sun didn’t rise.
Her family flew back East on the morning that the sun didn’t rise, when the Northern California skies were dark orange from wildfire smoke. As if that wasn’t ominous enough, she said having her kids so far away felt like she was missing an organ or a limb. The deep yearning for their bodies, left her feeling like she couldn’t relax or be anywhere fully. She repeatedly asked her husband to remind her that “it was going to be okay….”
Having her kids so far away felt like she was missing an organ or a limb. The deep yearning for their bodies, left her feeling like she couldn’t relax or be anywhere fully.
She shared that when she put her kids on that airplane she truthfully did not know if her business was going to close, she really thought that she could somehow save it. She handled the immediate risk, getting her daughter to cleaner air, which ultimately created space for her own thoughts and intuition to arrive. Once her family left and the survival mode of the daily grind faded, she said she could finally hear herself think and she found herself sitting with pain, overwhelming pain.
When she eventually sat down with her accountant and book keeper, she realized the business had effectively closed on March 16 (the day the pandemic hit) despite the fact that she had spent an additional 7 months trying to revive it at all costs, even launching a "Pay It Forward" initiative to feed the frontline of pandemic workers. She said that she could take the cash she had in the bank from her busy season to close down the cafe or wait until that cash was gone and then be forced out, either way her business was closing and she had to decide which scenario felt best for her.
She said that if kids weren't part of the decision making process she would’ve stuck it out and we both agreed that one of the hardest parts of running a business in the midst of motherhood, is that you do not get to make decisions just for yourself. She shared how she often thought about her girls, and the type of example she wanted to set for them. She described herself as a zombie, and a ghost of a mother during this particular time, as she couldn’t turn any of it off and compared it to riding a rollercoaster.
“We both agreed that one of the hardest parts of running a business in the midst of motherhood, is that you do not get to make decisions just for yourself.”
Enjoying a BOL with my kids, they still ask to go to the smoothie shop that has the faces.
Upon announcing her location’s closure, many people came forward and asked how they could help, but there was no scenario that included success for her personally. She never set up a go fund me because there was no end in sight and she didn’t feel like she could define what she truly needed, she said she kept asking herself “until when, for what, how much would it take?” Without those answers, the best option was to close her business and walk away.
We live in a society that expects women and mothers in particular to do whatever it is, often at the cost of themselves. The pandemic brought this heart wrenching reality to the surface, as so many women were forced to choose between their career and their kids. When she realized she couldn’t willpower herself through this mess, she decided she wanted to redefine what it meant to be brave.
She said it is often easier to put the blinders on, to drain the bank account, to push forward despite the rising costs, to ignore reality than to face it head on. But listening and knowing herself enough to make the harder decision and choosing a different path is my definition of brave. Chelsea was able to make a better decision for herself that ultimately trickled down to her kids in a different and very meaningful way.
We talked about redefining success and while she walked away with absolutely nothing financially, she received letters from her staff who had been with her the entire time and that was success for her. Not to mention the internal satisfaction of staying true to herself. She wishes there was an equal celebration for that kind of success, a much quieter type of success.
She went on to share the lessons that she learned from her experience, including the decision to sign a lease that required her to be open 7 days a week 9-5PM. Many leases have clauses such as these, but this particular requirement did not meet her business model and ended up costing her lots of unnecessary money as she had to adhere to strict business hours in order to fulfill her contractual obligation.
After closing she thought she had lined up a sublease, but was heartbroken to learn her lease did not allow for her to sublet or to pass her business on to another food related business, even one that wanted to buy all her equipment and offer jobs to her employees. Instead, she was forced to demolish the space that she had built, right down to jackhammering out the commercial kitchen floors, at her own expense. I jokingly told her that she should have someone record the demo as a tangible reminder that our strength is often found in our own destruction. Little did I know that I would eventually do the same and these words rang in my mind as I found the strength to witness my own space be demolished.
A parting gift that Chelsea brought for me on the day of our original interview in October 2020, 5 days before she closed her business for good.
She shared about her own sobriety and said, we are so averse in society to feeling pain that we often medicate or turn to alcohol or drugs to cope. She said that when she started her business she set out to create a life that she didn’t want to leave, a life she didn’t want to run from. She said, while difficult, closing her business was far from the most difficult thing she had gone through which awarded her the strength to leave it all behind. The only way out of anything is through and there is so much strength to be found in undoing, in breaking.
We talked about wanting to wrap things up with a pretty little bow but that is often not how life plays out. I think we can all learn a lot from each other and we both learned it’s okay to not be okay, it’s okay to not know where you are going or when you might arrive. I am a firm believer that everything points you in the right direction and life happens on purpose.
The closing sign at BOL.
At the time, I told her, “you built something and that doesn’t get taken away from you, but life is such that the something you built doesn’t work anymore and so you literally have to strip away all those things and build it back up, and that is the hardest type of rebuild there is but that is the strongest foundation you will ever have and so you have to just believe that everything you are doing now is a step in the right direction.”
We caught up a few weeks ago, picking up right where we left off, and that second conversation was just as powerful as the first. I was curious to see how Chelsea’s life over the past few years had unfolded. We discussed how the things we try, the ideas we quit, the failures we endure ultimately become building blocks for something else further down the road.
She said our initial conversation stuck with her as well, particularly my referencing the quote, “What is meant for you will always find its way” even admitting that she wrote it on a post-it she kept on her wall these past few years. These words felt like a gift from an earlier version of myself, reminding both of us that we have always been on our own paths if only we could trust that what is meant for us will eventually find us.
She explained that shortly after arriving in the Berkshires her friends expressed excitement that she would bring a BOL cafe to them; this desire for people wanting her to recreate the thing she had just released, wanting her to be the version of herself she had just left behind. She said it took her a long time to land, and when she did she found that she was once again leaning into her Bodywork and Healing Arts education, the same work that had been unavailable to her in those early years of motherhood.
She said she finally has a vision for her future, but is taking it slowly and avoiding her desire to pivot cannonball too quickly. Instead she is combining her Chinese Medicine education, newly acquired Functional Health Coach qualifications, and her love for Bodywork into a deeply healing offering she calls Consider Balance.
It goes without saying that I would not be here writing these words, without Chelsea. My gratitude towards her will never end and I will continue to honor her and her powerful story as I step more fully into the work I have mostly been avoiding these past few years.
You can follow along with Chelsea and her work on her website.
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