The Dream They Sell You About Working For Yourself

And the part nobody talks about enough

There’s so much pressure now to build a life where you work for yourself.

Be your own boss.

Choose your own hours.

Work from your laptop.

Create freedom.

Monetize your passion.

Build the dream life.

And listen — I understand why that dream is appealing.

Especially for women.

Especially for mothers.

Especially for women who have spent years trying to squeeze themselves into jobs, schedules, systems, and expectations that never really fit them.

The idea of freedom becomes intoxicating.

And in many ways, it is freeing.

But what nobody talks about enough is the emotional cost that can come with building something that depends entirely on you.

Because what they don’t tell you is that when you work for yourself…

You often work way more.

Way harder.

And carry way more emotional stress than the average person who goes to work, clocks out, and leaves work at work.

When you own the business, you become emotionally attached to every part of it.

Every launch.

Every post.

Every signup.

Every cancellation.

Every idea.

Every failure.

Every silence.

And someone once said something to me that I don’t think I fully understood until recently:

“No one will ever care about your business as much as you do.”

And honestly?

That sentence explains so much of what my last few years have felt like.

I Pour My Heart Into Everything I Do

I don’t really know how to do things halfway.

When I care about something, I throw myself into it completely.

My ideas aren’t just business ideas to me.

They’re personal.

They come from my heart.

My experiences.

My pain.

My hope.

My desire to help women feel less alone.

And because of that, when something doesn’t become what I hoped it would become…

It hurts deeply.

Not just financially.

Emotionally.

Because when you pour your heart and soul into creating communities, programs, content, launches, masterclasses, ideas…

…and they aren’t met with what you’ve defined as “success”…

it slowly starts to eat away at you.

And if I’m being completely honest?

My definition of success became very tied to:

• sold out launches

• massive communities

• explosive growth

• momentum

• numbers

• visibility

Because in the online space, it’s very easy to start believing that bigger means better.

That if something didn’t “blow up,” it somehow failed.

So I kept trying to find “the thing.”

The thing that would finally work.

The thing that would finally take off.

The thing that would finally make everything feel stable.

And yes, of course finances were part of that.

Let’s be real.

I have two boys who are expensive to raise.

Sports.

Travel.

Food.

Life.

Money matters.

And pretending otherwise would be dishonest.

But I also know my heart was always in the right place.

I genuinely wanted to help people.

The Giving Eventually Turns Into Resentment

This is the part I’m still unpacking.

I would give and give and give.

More support.

More content.

More access.

More emotional labour.

More flexibility.

More understanding.

More of myself.

And at first, it feels fulfilling.

Until slowly, almost invisibly, resentment starts creeping in.

Not because people were demanding it from me.

But because I wasn’t protecting myself from myself.

I think this happens to a lot of women.

Especially women who are natural caregivers.

We overgive.

We overextend.

We overfunction.

And then eventually we feel depleted, unseen, exhausted, and resentful.

Not because we’re bad people.

But because weak boundaries have a way of quietly turning generosity into self-abandonment.

And I think entrepreneurship can magnify that tendency enormously.

Because when your income, your purpose, your identity, and your heart are all tangled together…

It becomes very hard to separate yourself from the success or failure of the thing you built.

Then I Walked Into Edit HQ

And honestly?

Something shifted.

Since walking into the doors of Edit HQ, life has felt… lighter.

Not perfect.

Not stress-free.

But easier.

I show up.

I coach.

I connect with women.

I teach my classes.

I support my clients throughout the day.

And then I come home.

And for the first time in a very long time, I don’t feel like I’m carrying the entire emotional weight of building something every second of every day.

I just get to be me.

And maybe that sounds simple.

But after years of trying to constantly create, grow, market, launch, prove, sell, and sustain something entirely on my own…

simple feels revolutionary.

Maybe Success Looks Different Than I Thought

For years I thought success meant freedom.

No boss.

No schedule.

No answering to anyone.

But what I’m realizing now is that freedom without support can become incredibly heavy.

And maybe success isn’t necessarily building the biggest thing.

Maybe success is:

• enjoying your actual life

• having energy left for your family

• not living in constant financial panic

• feeling emotionally regulated

• doing meaningful work without destroying yourself

• being part of something instead of carrying everything alone

  
  

Maybe success is waking up without a nervous system already in overdrive.

Maybe success is no longer needing every single thing you create to validate your worth.

And maybe the most surprising part of all of this is realizing that I didn’t fail by stepping into something simpler.

I think I just finally stopped trying to prove myself through exhaustion.