THIS WASN'T ON MY VISION BOARD.

I wish I could tell you The Reclamation started because someone challenged me to build a brand around resilience for a marketing assignment.

Or that it began as a client project.

Honestly, as a marketer, I would've loved one of those origin stories.

I really hate to bring the mood down so early into us meeting, but unfortunately... this brand wasn't born from one bad day, one bad job, or one bad friendship.

It was born from years of slowly abandoning myself.

Then someone I admired made choices I never thought they would make.

And suddenly, I was standing in a place that felt painfully familiar.

It’s a tale as old as time, really.

I am an empath.

A chronic people pleaser. 

Hyper-independent to a fault, because depending on other people hasn’t exactly worked out for me. Throw in a healthy fear of abandonment and you've got someone who could win Olympic gold in giving people the benefit of the doubt.

I have a CVS receipt-length history of believing I occupied a bigger place in people's lives than I actually did.

The most recent occurrence?

My best friend of over 6 years dropped me for a 6 month glorified situationship.

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But this story doesn’t begin there..

It begins years earlier.

With becoming the kind of person who believed that if I loved people deeply enough, worked hard enough, and stayed loyal enough, eventually people would choose me too.

Because when someone showed me who they were, I rarely believed them the first time.

I would rewrite someone else's intentions before I would rewrite my own expectations.

Spoiler alert:

Grace without accountability is a fantastic way to end up writing journal entries on the internet.

I built The Reclamation because somewhere along the way I poured so much of myself into other people, jobs, and versions of who I thought I was supposed to be, that I could no longer tell where they ended and I began.

Then, almost all at once, everything I thought was stable fell apart.

My closest friendship.

My career.

The identity I'd quietly built around both.

Oh... one small detail I left out?

She was also my boss.

Because apparently I looked at every career warning ever written and thought, that won't happen to me.

As the dust settled, I couldn’t stop asking myself:

How did I get here?

The answer wasn't one defining moment.

I had spent years looking for belonging in places that required me to become smaller to earn it.

Every brand has an origin story.

Most begin with an idea.

This one began with learning the difference between being chosen and choosing myself.

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Here's the part I wish someone had warned me about:

Betrayal rarely arrives all at once.

Sometimes it shows up as tiny moments where you become easier to disappoint than to prioritize.

A comment you laugh off because it wasn’t directed at you… this time.

Small lies that start to come all too frequently and easily.

A boundary you decide isn't worth enforcing.

The plans that always seem easier to cancel when they involve you.

The conversation that leaves you wondering if you're asking for too much, when all you really asked for was basic respect.

You start explaining away behavior that, if it happened to someone you loved, you'd immediately tell them they deserved better.

Because that's what loyal people do.

We rationalize.

We minimize.

Until one day, you wake up and realize you've been shrinking yourself to preserve relationships that weren't protecting you in return.

And that's the cruelest part.

Betrayal doesn't only cost you the relationship.

If you're not careful, it quietly teaches you to abandon yourself.

Realizing that broke something in me.

It also gave me permission to stop breaking myself for everyone else.

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Now, it’s my turn.

For years, I knew I wanted to build something of my own, I just couldn't figure out what.

I'd start a project. Design a brand. Build a website.

Spend hours dreaming about what it could become.

Then I'd wake up the next morning and feel... nothing.

The excitement disappeared as quickly as it arrived.

This feels different.

For the first time in a very long time, I wake up excited.

The moment I close my laptop and try to step away, another idea arrives. A sentence. A memory. A connection I hadn't seen before. Every time I think I've captured one idea, three more arrive. My Notes app is doing its best to keep up.

I have always wondered what it would feel like to be this certain about something.

Now I know.

The strangest part is what it does to my brain.

I've spent years chasing this feeling. Therapy. Medication. Yoga. Every productivity hack under the sun.

But when I'm working on The Reclamation, my brain finally goes quiet.

Not empty. Not numb.

Just... quiet.

The constant noise disappears. 

Did I mention I’m a chronic overthinker?

For hours, I'm completely absorbed. Completely present. Completely in flow.

Oddly enough, sitting in front of my laptop writing essays about the worst parts of my life has been the most peaceful I've felt in years.

It's the kind of focus I've spent years wishing I could manufacture.

Turns out, I wasn't missing discipline. I was missing alignment.

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Somehow, while everything else in my life feels like it's falling apart, this passion project is piecing back together something that was lost deep inside me.

I don't know where this will lead.

Maybe it'll become a community.

Maybe it'll become books.

A podcast. Events. Or something I haven't even imagined yet.

Or maybe it'll simply become the place where I found myself again.

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Here's to building something no one can take away from me.

Welcome to The Reclamation.

Will I burn my life down?

Maybe.

Will I reclaim myself?

I think that’s already begun.

This isn't where my story ends. 

It's where I stop handing other people the pen.

This is my Reclamation.