REVIVAL

I had the absolute pleasure of being asked to speak at our local chapter of Creative Mornings for May. If you aren't familiar with the group, there are chapters around the world and each month there is a new topic. Our local chapter meets on a Friday morning to listen to someone speak on the month's theme. May was Revival, which as you'll read in part of me speech was beyond perfect.

I will share more about my experience in another post but I wanted to share a portion of my speech here. I structured it as the story I have written out here which I did read but not word for word, there was a lot of added and deleted things along the way and then I went into more presentation type stuff. Writing and subsequently sharing this with a room of over 100 people was the most healing and therapeutic thing I could have done. I had a very basic slideshow with photos that went along which I'll toss in here too!

It’s 2013 and my now ex husband, Dan and I were on an adventure. An epic road trip through various national parks - camping, hiking, exploring and finally climbing some real mountains. He was the outdoorsy type, I enjoyed nature from the comfort of my patio with easy access to a real bathroom and snacks. It didn’t take long for me to get the hype around this whole being outside thing and I was super stoked for one of my first legit hikes. We were in Glacier National Park and hiking up something really tall, don’t remember the name. Somewhere between both of  us getting altitude sickness, me trying to decide how we’d get the others body off the mountain when one of us died and a lot of tears because climbing mountains is hard, especially when you’re delirious, I made the astute observation that everyone we had passed and chatted with was so damn happy. It’s kind of like Happy People Hike! 

Fast forward to our return home, me with a broken ankle and rocks embedded in my knee from falling in a parking lot, as one does when climbing mountains, and Dan decides to make a sticker. It’s cute and obviously the phrase is catchy, but its not like stick it on your car cute. So he sticks it on his car. Little did either of us know those three simple words and one kind of OK sticker would impact so much of our lives all these years later. 

Short version - a sticker turned into a hat and shirt and an etsy site. The etsy site turned into a weebly site then WIX because neither of us spoke internet and that was dumb people proof.  Our marriage was full of joy and fun and lots of adventure. I turned into a crazy outdoorsy person - although I still really like real bathrooms. He found success in the sports and entertainment industry. I built a real estate brokerage from the ground up and we both played around with Happy People Hike as time allowed. When I got busy it was his to manage, when he was busy it was mine. It was some extra vacation money, but mostly it was just a fun, creative outlet and way to meet new people and do new things.

And then Outside Magazine found us. In 2019, around the same time we were aware of some issues within our relationship but were only casually trying to deal with it without anyone else knowing,  we were invited to an Outdoor Expo in Chicago. We decided if we were going to be part of an event in a big city next to brands like Patagonia and North Face we probably should try to look like a real brand with a legit website and some more polished designs. 

 So, thanks to Mr. Derek Mohr (who’s dad I was friends with), we got our new site and new designs! We built our mission, we hired some friends to help and drove a Uhaul full of shit to Chicago - side note, check the height of the parking garage you prepaid for before driving a Uhaul to Chicago.

From there we really started to intentionally build the brand and forcibly confront our relationship. Certain things brought it to light but in the end it was months of trying to salvage a marriage that had run it’s course. We were still best friends, we were not romantic partners. And we could have stayed married and it would have been fine. But while we were both questioning everything about ourselves, the one thing we didn’t question was that neither of us were willing to settle for fine. Life is too damn short. Our home had an apartment in the basement so he moved down there and by March 2020 he was ready to sign a lease. And we all know what happened in March 2020. With both of us self employed, him in a very non essential industry, me in a no one could decide if we were essential industry, and our finances still intertwined, moving out seemed like a dumb idea, besides it was only going to be for 2 more weeks. He was definitely there for a lot of months past 2 more weeks but it ended up being a really amazing time for us to reconcile some things and find some closure ultimately finalizing our divorce in November via zoom court because life was weird in 2020. And transferring majority ownership and full management and decision responsibilities of HPH to me.

I guess you could say this is where my first mini revival started, though looking back now, it's laughable that I thought that this was my big moment and I was healed and ready to thrive. As a brand, I set my sights on wholesale because that’s what you’re supposed to do to grow. I remember a call with a business coach where I said something about becoming the next Patagonia and we broke my goals down to a “managable” adding like 10 thousand people to our email list in 2 months which seemed super reasonable considering I was also working about 80 hour weeks growing my real estate brokerage. You know what’s really fun though, when you have all these amazing external goals and projects and everyone is praising you for your success and how well you managed your divorce and how cool it is that you are still friends, and to do list after to do list, you don’t have to actually confront anything within yourself. And while I had a phenomenal therapist that did really help me to start digging into things, I only let her dig so far. 

As we found some very small wholesale opportunities and added maybe 20 more people to our email list, I felt this new me blossoming and I decided to really embrace my whole outdoorsy girl vibe and sell almost everything I owned to move to 3 acres in the middle of nowhere. So in 2022 I became an official Bridgeton resident along with the 2 chickens that were living in the basement of the home I purchased. (Just to be clear its Bridgeton, NOT  Bridgerton, literally the opposite)

I also started playing with the idea of getting out of real estate. I knew that was never my long game, but so much of who I was and how people knew me was real estate. It’s’ funny when you own your own thing how much of your personal identity gets wrapped into what you do. That also was my main source of income and it was a good one. HPH was good for a vacation but it certainly wasn’t going to pay for my new kitchen. 

At some point in 2023 I made the decision to sell the brokerage and started the process of not just selling it but unraveling that entire identity. Then in August I called the doctor about some weird things happening with my skin and they moved other people around to get me in at 8am the next morning. That didn’t feel great, I feel like they don’t do that if they just think it’s something simple. By 8:30 the next morning, I was told I wasn’t dying but was misdiagnosed and everything just kept getting worse. A few weeks later I went to a different doctor who decided to do a biopsy of my armpit on site - really not fun. Also I’m not dumb, I know why people do biopsies. Once again, not dying but ended up with all sorts of weird creams for weird shit. 

Somewhere mid 2024 when I still was dealing with weird creams for weird shit, was  finalizing the sale of the brokerage, my mom got diagnosed with Alzheimer's and I had to step into a caregiver role, and trying to figure out how the hell HPH was going to pay my mortgage, that is when my true revival began. 

I was asked to speak this year back in August of 2024. I  chose this topic to talk to you all about, because my birthday is the end of the month and it felt like the perfect time to talk about revival. I’d done this whole reborn again thing a few times over, or so I thought. I had made big changes. I had worked through some very heavy stuff but still had this pretty little rock solid wall built around who I was and who the world saw. Who I wanted to be and who I chose to be each day. I thought I had dealt with my childhood traumas and was on my way to this fairytale life. Instead I found myself physically feeling awful, unable to pay my bills because I was relying on a business that was failing, taking care of parents who I have a complicated relationship with, and moving forward in a new serious romantic relationship that was (and is) wonderful but also very triggering when you haven’t actually dealt with past relationship trauma. 

The only thing I knew for sure was all of this would eventually be an important part of my story, I just had to make it through. It would be another 10 hour long speech but I have had enough moments since the actual moment I was born until now to know that I am here for a reason and even when the journey really fucking sucks, if I trust it and lean into it, something good is on the other side. I didn’t come this far to just come this far. We had already made some adjustments with HPH including adding two more partners with expertise in different areas (derek!) and knew we wanted to build a new website. Knowing that was coming, I knew I had to really sit with what this brand and company were and why the hell I was still doing this so many years later with minimal financial success. Any sane person would have given up by now. I also had to figure out why  we went from an upward trajectory to not being able to give a tshirt away. 

So what had changed? I’m the one that had changed. I can look back at our numbers and instagram (because that’s how I remember what was happening when) and when I started NEEDING it to be a financial success and doing all the things you're supposed to do instead of following my intuition and often chaotic heart, it all stopped. We stopped getting engagement, we stopped getting sales, and I stopped enjoying it. Wholesale is miserable, I didn’t want to do it. Checking numbers each day and trying to have set goals and monthly check-ins is just not my style. 

I looked back at my real estate brokerage where I did literally everything opposite of what any real estate coach would tell you to do, and I found insane success and built something totally different than any other brokerage around. I was true to myself and what I wanted and I gave no shits about what anyone else thought. And it worked. It worked really, really well with minimal effort and a lot of joy. 

Digging back into the ethos of why HPH exists and what I wanted it to be forced me to look at why I exist and what I wanted me to be. I know my values. I have a very strong sense of who I am, what I stand for and what I want to share with the world, I just wasn’t doing it. I looked in the mirror and didn’t see the real me. I saw a very tired, kinda sad and utterly burnt out version of myself. 

We were rebuilding the foundations of Happy People Hike so I took that cue to start rebuilding the foundations of my own being. I was set to lead a retreat out in Joshua Tree so I kind of used that as a guide post and made all sorts of lists of areas of life I wanted to dig into and changes I wanted to make prior. Everything from my physical space, to how I was managing finances, my movement practices, my eating habits, the people I was spending time with, literally all of it. AND most importantly, the internal stuff. I essentially gave myself homework in the form of journal prompts and meditations and dedicated time to go inward and start dealing with my own shit. While there is no end to this kind of work, I do believe there are end points along the way and the retreat was meant to be a celebration and rebirth of sorts for both myself and my brand. It ended up being that and so much more. 

So weird story that will make sense in a minute. When I was doing the whole dating thing one of my favorite questions to ask people was “if you could pick a song to listen to while you are dying, what would you pick?” I loved seeing people's reactions because they either look at you like your bat shit crazy or they are intrigued and want to know where you came up with such a wild question. And if they were intrigued, it was fascinating to me what songs people would come up with. My song is Wildflowers by Tom Petty which I very rarely ever hear randomly on the radio or in a store or anything like that. 

SO, we’re back to the retreat which was so much more transformative then I ever could have imaged, especially as one of the leaders who was supposed to be facilitating that transformation for others. In our last evening yoga session, during the take a nap part at the end, as I was really just feeling an immense amount of gratitude, a very soft and sweet version of Wildflowers started playing. Now I believe in all the woo woo stuff and in that moment it really felt like the old version of me was finally ready to say goodbye - a death of sorts.  For me it felt very visceral and tangible, not just a symbolic metaphor type thing. What I realized a few weeks later as I was back home and being a very new and different person in the world, was that I yes, I was a new and different person from the last few years, but I was the exact same kid who used to love with an open heart, play in the dirt, laugh as loud as she wanted, and who truly just loved being her weird, quirky and wonderful self. Old me didn’t die just to birth a new me. I revived the true me that got buried under the bullshit of life. 

And that’s essentially what we did with Happy People Hike. We stripped away all the stuff you should do but that didn’t feel aligned and got back to our roots. Back to the fun, quirky, kinda random but super meaningful projects. And it’s working. We went from quite literally zero sales to consistent sales, people approaching us for partnerships and projects from around the country and we’re once again having a lot of fun doing it. 

As I was reliving these moments putting this together for you all, I kept thinking about what I would go back and tell myself if given the chance. I think the biggest take away from my entire life is that it really is about the journey and you are allowed to change and grow and evolve and die and be reborn again as many times as you damn well want. You are never stuck and it’s never too late to be who you want to be. That doesn’t mean it’s easy. That doesn’t mean you won’t get down a new path and realize that it’s again, the wrong one but if it is, you likely learned something along the way. Especially if you are a creative or an entrepreneur, you could spend years building something only to realize one day it’s not right and it’s not what you want, and that’s OK. We see the ending of things in society as a bad thing. A marriage ends or a business closes and it’s a failure and something to be sad about. I would argue that my marriage was more successful than most. We had an amazing life experience together, it was just done, and that was a good thing for both of us. I got a lot of weird comments when people started finding out that I sold my real estate brokerage, like “oh I’m so sorry to hear that” or the “market is tough right now”  - nope, market was fine, I was making plenty of money, I just didn’t want to do it anymore.

My personal growth over the last year or so has been labeled a mid life crisis by more than a few and that’s cool if that’s what you want to call it. I would argue the crisis was finding myself in a career and a life that I never really wanted and I finally had the courage to do something about it. I stopped being the nice girl who did what everyone else expected her to do -  which I guess I could see how that’s a crisis for others but I’m living the exact opposite of a crisis. I’m waking up every day excited for what’s to come, I’m savoring a life that money wasn’t able to buy me, and I’m building a community around me that’s built on truth and authenticity. I was dying in a life I never wanted and instead of waiting for the ambulance to save me, I saved my own damn self. A true revival isn’t some magical moment that randomly happens. It’s built with awareness, intention and an understanding that you have the power to change anything you want, anytime you want.