The Gift of Losing Everything
I saw something this week that stopped me in my tracks: “Losing everything is the most violent form of clarity.” Bit dramatic, perhaps, but fuck me, it resonated. Because the strange thing is, I’ve probably never had less certainty around me, and yet I’ve never felt more certain about myself. The last year has stripped a lot away. The life I thought I’d have, the security, the plans and the version of me that thought she knew roughly what the next ten years looked like. Starting again isn’t nearly as romantic as people make it sound either. It’s expensive, frightening and sometimes lonely. Sometimes you’re robbing Peter to pay Paul and wondering whether you’ve completely lost your mind. But there’s also something quite extraordinary that happens when there’s not much left to hide behind. You find out what you actually want.
The thing is, I’ve known what I wanted for a while. I don’t want to make this sound like I’ve spent the summer sitting in the countryside staring wistfully out of a window like Barbara Cartland writing a novel until my purpose suddenly appeared. I haven’t. I’ve known what I wanted for the last year, and I’ve been working bloody hard on it. In April, Steph and I launched the beta version of the Pink Gorilla Collective. We didn’t have a big investment behind it, an enormous launch budget or a team of people making it happen for us. We had an idea, so we tested it. We listened, changed things, worked out what people actually needed rather than assuming we knew, and kept going. And now the Pink Gorilla Collective is a proper, legitimate, up-and-running business. I’m super fucking proud of us. Actually, I don’t think I’ve stopped enough to say that. I’m proud of myself and I’m proud of Steph. We took something that existed in our heads and turned it into something real with pretty much no money. We’re now having the proper branding done, and watching it turn into the thing we imagined gives me an immense sense of pride.
Maybe I needed to prove something to myself too. That I could still build. That I could have an idea, test it, change it, stick with it and turn it into a business. Turns out I can. And now I’m ready for the next thing. I’ve also realised I can do more than one thing. I don’t have to pick one little box and sit inside it forever. Pink Gorilla doesn’t have to stop because I’m building the Wellness Tavern. The Wellness Tavern doesn’t mean I can’t have another project. The Collective doesn’t suddenly fall apart because I’ve had another idea. They can all feed into each other, and actually, I think that’s the whole bloody point.
This summer I’ve been tucked away in a lovely house in the country, working from my laptop and deliberately giving myself some space away from the workshop. Soon I’ll be spending more time back in London, helping look after my grandchildren while my daughter is at university. The Wellness Tavern isn’t open yet and the building work will be happening, but I don’t need to stand there watching someone put a ceiling up. On the days I’m not looking after the kids, I don’t want to sit in an empty workshop with my laptop just because that’s technically where I “work”. So I started thinking about something I’d already planned for the Wellness Tavern: taking it on the road. And then I thought, why the hell am I waiting until it’s open?
I’ve literally just spent six months proving the value of testing an idea before trying to make it perfect, so I’m going to do it again. I want to test what happens when I take some of what the Wellness Tavern will eventually offer out into communities. Small business help, one-to-ones, workshops, meet-ups, wellbeing and conversations. Particularly reaching people who might not have £150 for a business consultation or the money to jump on a train to London for an event. I’ll still be working. I’ll have my laptop, I’ll still be running Pink Gorilla, looking after clients, doing social media work and having paid one-to-ones. My work funds me. But alongside that, I want to offer free and pay-as-you-can workshops and one-to-ones in communities where money can be the thing that stops someone asking for help in the first place.
There’s just one slight problem. I need a campervan, and right now I can’t fund one myself. Every spare penny I have is disappearing into getting the Wellness Tavern off the ground. So I’ve done something I’ve wrestled with enormously: I’ve started a GoFundMe. Even typing that makes part of me cringe because I don’t want to be a Beggy Mitchell. I’m not asking people to fund me disappearing around Britain in a campervan having a lovely time. I’m still working and earning my own living. What I’m asking people to help fund is the vehicle that makes the project possible, so I can spend six months taking this idea out into communities and see whether it has the legs I think it has.
And perhaps that’s another thing losing everything teaches you. You stop waiting for perfect circumstances. There isn’t a big safety net underneath me anymore. There isn’t a pot of money somewhere that means I can casually try every idea I have. I have to be resourceful. I have to collaborate. I have to ask for things. Sometimes I have to say, “I can’t do this bit on my own.” That’s been surprisingly difficult for someone who has spent most of her life just getting on with things. But maybe asking people to get behind an idea isn’t begging. Maybe that’s how things get built. I’m not asking anyone to rescue me. I’m asking people who believe in what I’m trying to create to help me get it moving.
Personally, this week has tested me to my absolute limit. There are things happening behind the scenes that I won’t go into here, and life is still very much life. But underneath all of that, I’m incredibly calm about where I’m going. More than that, I’m proud of myself. I’m proud that when my life changed beyond recognition, I didn’t sit around waiting for another version of my old life to arrive. I started building a new one. I don’t desperately want the old one back. I’m not trying to recreate what I had. I’m making something completely different.
And that’s why that quote hit me so hard. When everything gets stripped away, you discover what was actually yours in the first place: your ideas, your character, your resilience, your ability to make something happen, your willingness to get back up when something goes spectacularly tits up, and your ability to start again. I’ve spent a lot of my life accumulating things that made me feel secure. Now I have less of that stuff, but I have an extraordinary amount of freedom. More importantly, I trust myself. I know I can build something because I’ve just done it. I know I can start with fuck all because I’ve just done that too. And I know I don’t have to choose one dream and abandon all the others.
Maybe losing everything wasn’t the end of my story. Maybe it cleared enough space for me to realise just how much I’m capable of building next.
And apparently, the next bit involves a campervan.
Of course it bloody does.
You can check out the go fund me here
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