Heal to Lead

15The Value of Nothingness

THE SHAME AND embarrassment I carried for failing the friends and family who invested in the Holistic Option had an upper hand on me. Inside, I was consumed by feelings of worthlessness. The self-importance of my reputation and how others perceived my lack of financial responsibility confirmed that my mother had been right about me all along. It took years for me to purposely delve into the emotions surrounding that experience, to open up to the idea that I was not a failure as a human being, but that the disruptive concept was ill-timed in many ways.

What I had never considered, though, was that by founding a second company just two years after my mother exited my life, and only three years into running my marketing agency, one business was not enough. I had to start a second company to prove my worth—and disprove that my mother's decision to walk away was related to my value as a person. Because that abandonment was simultaneously traumatizing and retraumatizing, it fell right into the framework I talked about in Chapter 1. In my subconscious mind, the way I went about ensuring the safety of my ego was through the lens of the third receptacle: “I have to work harder: ‘I'll get it perfect next time; maybe then she'll love me.’”

If we dive even deeper, back in 2006 this particular business in the emerging industry of holistic healing and wellness was an external manifestation of the healing I needed. In a conversation with business therapist and mindset ...