The founder story often gets told like it’s glamorous. Here’s the truth: mine is not.

I'm 20 weeks pregnant with hormonal skin and a bum that won’t fit any of my old pants, a toddler who isn’t sleep trained, no daycare and a full-time job that requires high emotional input, maximum attention to detail and 100% financial risk.

The house is toddler trashed, the bags under my eyes could hold an ocean, and my iPhone is my laptop and quite often my emails are sent between the hours of 1 am-4 am from bed with a toddler, finally resettled, in my stinky armpit.

Now, I thought the start-up phase of founding a business was the messy part - but I gotta say it just doesn't compare to the in-tandem baby-making-raising phase. It’s pure slog! My body and endocrine system are under the pump, and yet here I am with my head focused somehow on SÜK. - But would I trade any of this in? No way.

Here’s what I’m learning through this to hold on and make it worthwhile:

⁃ Financial risk = freedom.

⁃ My toddler’s joy/tantrums = manual for good living  

⁃ A trashed house = a playful life

⁃ My growing bum = fertility

⁃ Asking for help = a powerful act

⁃ Hormonal skin = new life

⁃ Exhaustion = putting it all on the line for love

The thing that strikes me strongest and what pulls me into balance when I think “I just can’t live in these pants for one more day” (and night🫣) or “I am not strong enough to keep this all afloat”, is that this is a season, one I will remember fondly when the chaos has passed.

But also, that this is work, the kind of work that I’ve been training for my whole life; I’ve developed the work ethic, resilience and tendency to love over decades, and now it’s playing out, exactly as I need it to, when I need it. Yes, it comes with blood, sweat and tears, but all good things do.