This is the first blog entry of my journey to launching Fête la Tête, which I hope will provide value to anyone else who may be struggling with entrepreneurship, neurodivergence, death, or a breakup. To be honest, I'm writing this for myself, but I find that reading or hearing someone's story that I really connect with is so healing to me, so I'm putting my heart out there in case it can help at least one person.
In May this year, I took a big leap and hired a coach for the first time, which also came with a course made especially for people with ADHD. I had been struggling my whole life with starting something and then getting burnt out, and abandoning a partially finished project. I often felt disorganized, like I was just spinning my wheels. Not to mention the struggles I have with autism too, which is another can of worms. My coach helped me realize a lot of my struggles were caused by a failure of my systems, and I was inspired to try my dream again, in a bigger and better way. I had a fire lit up inside me! I was so excited and full of ideas again. It felt like there was momentum building.
But then I was blindsided by grief. I found out that the best friend I ever had recently passed away from breast cancer. There's so much I could say, but the worst thing about it is the guilt and shame I feel about my time blindness and limited working memory that made me forget all about her terminal illness. I feel like such a terrible friend, and I miss her so much. I want to honor her and continue her legacy, sharing her artwork in the best way that I can. The idea of featuring her artwork in the October subscription boxes felt like a really meaningful thing I could do, as October is her birthday month and also Breast Cancer Awareness Month. I could use the proceeds to pay off her medical bills, or donate to research, or something else to make a positive impact on the world.
Whenever I look through catalogs of beads or packaging, I often think of my friend Kiana because I find cute or pretty things that she would've liked. She was the sweetest, funniest, and quirkiest person you could ever meet. Rocks and minerals were one of her special interests, but she also loved quirky socks and cigars and cheese. She made beautiful works of art, using washi tape to embellish her hand-drawn characters, but she used a lot of other mediums too!
For the most part I feel normal, but then once in a while the grief hits me hard.
Less than 2 months later, I'm blindsided again by a relationship ending in the worst way possible. Now I'm experiencing another type of grief. Grief for a future that's never going to happen, and grief for losing one of the few people left who was very close to me. I still work a full-time job where I work for the government, and there's so much to do right now that I need to work a lot of overtime just to keep up, but I don't have the bandwidth right now.
It seems like all this extra stress is making me grieve my friend Kiana even more, and making me feel on edge. I'm afraid I'm going to snap at someone, or burst into tears over something small. I feel like I lost all will to work on my business. I had time tonight to do something, anything, but I barely even scrolled through Facebook while sitting in my studio. Writing this blog post (in bed on my phone) is the most productive thing I've done in almost 2 weeks. At least I have been productive cleaning and maintaining my house; it feels very healing, so I'm going with that energy. But I'm sad that I feel like I'm going to miss my goal of launching the subscription box this fall, and then missing the Mardi Gras season since it'll be over before I know it. Especially if I miss the October subscription box, my first chance for celebrating Kiana during my grieving process.
It's hard to have patience and understanding for yourself when you just want to push past all of this because you have high expectations for yourself. I'm thankful that Kiana set me on the path to getting tested for neurodivergence, so at age 37 I was formally diagnosed with autism and ADHD. It gave me the language to articulate my struggles, and the self awareness to be more patient with myself, and to recognize the strengths that come with it. I think I would have been a lot harder on myself if I didn't realize that time blindness and low working memory were actual limitations.
Rushing to launch and being unprepared would be worse, though, so missing my self-imposed deadline is not the end of the world. I want to do things right, and provide the best value possible to my future customers. I don't want to let anyone down, especially myself. So I will take my time, and allow myself however long I need to recover. Thanks for reading. 💚💜💛