On turning 45…

This week I am turning forty-five years old. 

I recently learned that just about every girlfriend of mine has been injected with some form of botox regularly for years now. Needless to say: I have not. I’ve made the decision to go au natural with aging.  It may sound sort of odd, but I’m actually happy to be getting older. 

So much of my earlier life was filled with anxiety. I was worried about literally everything. My early adulthood was riddled with panic attacks and unhealthy ruminations. I was incredibly good at keeping it all to myself, so I doubt you would have known I was struggling so much -  even if you knew me well back then. 

I guess I’m a bit of a late bloomer. 

My coming of age story began when I hit my mental health rock bottom during the pandemic, in 2020. I spent a semester living alone in the woods of New Hampshire with my son and dog. I was waking up at 4 AM every day to keep my head above water while launching Petri. I was doing my best to buffer my son, who was seven at the time, from the terrors of daily life in a global pandemic. I was isolated in every sense of that word.

When my son and I returned to our home in Massachusetts, I was not well and I knew it. I went and got myself a therapist. It ends up that I hit the therapist jackpot when I found Jessie. With her support and guidance, I started to unpack some of my personal history and finally understood all of the roads that led me there.

As I started to put the pieces of my life back together again, I decided that I wanted to design my life more intentionally.

At age forty-two, I started making big moves. One brave choice gave me the courage to take on another. I put up boundaries with toxic family members. I started my own company. I asked for a divorce. I walked away from financial stability. I became a single mom.

It’s been an impossibly hard few years for me. And yet it feels like I’m starting to finally reap the rewards. Every choice that I have been making has been purposeful, aligning my actions with my values. 

So, here I am. I’m turning forty-five years old this week and in many ways I feel like I’m just at the start line. It took me so incredibly long to get here. 

There are some days when it still feels scary and overwhelming to be out here doing it all off the grid. Very little about my life feels traditional these days. But most of the time now, I feel joy. It’s a joy I have never known before - it is a happiness that is peaceful and profound.

Personally, I’ve had to build myself a new “family” over these past few years. I’ve spun a web of support around me that is full of the most wonderful people. I feel so grateful for their support and connection.

Professionally, I am so fulfilled by my work coaching and supporting first-time technical founders. All of my professional meanderings over the past twenty years as a teacher, writer, entrepreneur, academic, and venture capitalist feel like they were, in retrospect, the ideal training ground for doing this important work. 

If you asked me, when I was ten years old what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would have told you “I am going to change the world.” I had no idea exactly how I’d pull that off. It seems that Founder to Leader is my way of being a change-maker. Not only is my team supporting and enabling new leaders to bring their human health and climate solutions to the masses, but we are also helping them build healthy human-first organizations. On a day-to-day basis I sometimes lose sight of this but, when I step back, I feel deeply fulfilled by how we have found our niche doing good at scale. I also love that this all-women team is comprised of incredible people who, like me, are making thoughtful choices about how they apply their talents and live in this complex world.

Forty-five feels substantial. I know it’s not fifty but, for me, it feels like a major landmark separating out the past from the future.  I have scars and wrinkles and stretch marks and I’m not interested in hiding them. They are an important part of my journey. As a coach, all of these experiences have enabled me to support you as you, too, take the road less traveled. Not only do I get, tactically, how to launch and scale. But I can empathize deeply with all of the tricky personal and people stuff that comes in parallel. It feels like such a gift to be able to share what I’ve learned on this challenging journey to help others grow and learn and build intentionally, too.

I have a good feeling about what’s coming.