How We End

Saying Goodbye to Creations of Our Own Making

On a crisp, fall Ann Arbor day in 2018, I wandered into an informational meeting for a year-long start-up competition. I’d never done anything entrepreneurial before, and looking back, I’m not sure why I was there.

As the session ended, we were given time to mingle with the other students and share the idea we arrived with. With each introduction, I realized no one I spoke to came with an idea. Everyone showed up interested in joining someone else’s team. As the silences increased, I desperately tried to come up with something.

And then it happened.

What if you can help people be better at having hard conversations?

What if the shock that causes emotional reactions or the lack of information that causes problematic language could be mitigated with on-demand training?

What if this can all be done anonymously through a text message?

So I shared the idea. And people loved it. And you know what? I loved it. I’m sure I sounded a bit confused as I spoke to them because I was getting excited right along with them. Like it wasn’t my idea to begin with. But the truth is, it wasn’t. I was hearing it for the first time, too. I left the meeting with email addresses of all the people who wanted to join my team, a team and an idea I didn’t even have an hour ago.

In Elizabeth Gilbert’s book on creativity, “Big Magic,” she talks about ideas and their innate “aliveness.” How they land on us, and in doing so, we enter into a contract with that idea. “I promised the idea that I would never fight against it and never abandon it,” Gilbert said, “but would only cooperate with it to the utmost of my ability, until our work together was done.”

That day in September set events into motion. I was in my first semester of a dual masters program, and as the courses were feeling less and less in tune with the direction I wanted to take in life, this idea grew bigger and bigger. It just would not leave me alone. A month later I officially decided to drop out of the program at the end of the semester to pursue the idea full time.

In January 2019, Empowered Conversation was born. Things started out great. The idea was alive within me, after all. I’d tended to it, kept taking care of it in my mind, and made all the moves to dedicate myself to bringing it out into the world.

Starting with entrepreneurs, I sought guidance and support. LinkedIn was my friend, and my well-honed skills around internet stalking past crushes translated well into reaching out to people (professionally).

One of my first meetings, I asked the entrepreneur for his top piece of advice for starting out. He said to me, “When things get rocky, and they most certainly will, say to yourself what you’d say to someone on acid who’s having a bad trip, ‘Remember…you chose this.” I couldn’t stop laughing, and driving back from the coffeeshop that day, I knew I chose the right field to go into. Anyone who gives you professional advice through a drug related metaphor is someone to keep in your corner.

(This, by the way, was and still is one of my favorite parts of what I did: the amount of people I got to talk to, learn from, and be mentored by. I encountered so much kindness and generosity, so much inspiration from others’ stories and advice. Biggest lesson: If you’re genuine in the work you’re doing, you will find just the right people to support you in those efforts.)

Months go by of nonstop effort. And this is where things get tricky. In Big Magic, Gilbert goes on to say, “I believe that inspiration will always try its best to work with you — but if you are not ready or available, it may indeed choose to leave you and to search for a different human collaborator.”

I was losing the aliveness. Opening my laptop to work each morning felt like waking up from a dream that is just out of reach of your memory. Still, I kept trying to get that feeling back.

The cycles started, of spending a few weeks working on the company, and then stopping again. Out of fear, the wrong timing, or something else entirely, I’m still trying to figure that out myself. But what I do know is that I wasn’t keeping up my side of the bargain. I wasn’t signaling to the idea that I was ready and available. And the idea, after a while, left.

I am feeling loss right now, as I end my time with Empowered Conversation. But, looking back on the year spent working on this idea, more than anything, I feel joy. It was a year filled with so much goodness, so much learned.

I learned from the brightest and fiercest scholars, activists, lawyers and researchers around sexual assault in this country; their insight, persistence, intellect and dedication inspire me still.

I learned what I deeply love: immersing myself in a subject, researching, interviewing humans, and compiling that material into content and trainings.

I learned what I didn’t like: budgeting and financial analyses. Nothing more to say here.

I learned what I need to get better at: being more direct, getting as specific as possible on what needs help, then, you know, actually asking for that help.

I learned more about javascript and API’s and Twilio and firebase and… (I don’t have a point here but just knowing these words feels like a really big deal, okay?)

Most importantly, I learned that the act of creating something you believe in, well…there’s nothing like it. Alternatively, the act of creating something that is no longer alive in you can be dang near impossible. Sure, I could push and push to try to get it back, or, I could do the better thing, the kinder thing, and let the idea go.

In Rebecca Solnit’s book, “A Field Guide to Getting Lost” she writes, “The word ‘lost’ comes from the old Norse ‘los’ meaning the disbanding of an army. I worry now that people never disband their armies, never go beyond what they know.”

Website down. Bank account closed. Social media accounts deleted. Disbanding something you created arrives with a bittersweet ache but it feels better than leaving it open, in a perpetual state of pause and stasis.

Movement, even if it’s the movement of deconstruction, is better than no movement at all. To tie up the undone is to tip off the universe that you’re preparing to be open once again.

And I want to be ready for the next thing that comes. To be able in a fully, arms-wide-open kind of way. To do better. And the longer I hold onto the old, the less I’ll be able to do that. We hold on because it’s safe, because it’s scary to let go.

The hardest part is, I still believe in this idea. Like from the depths of my soul believe in it. But believing isn’t the same as doing, and this idea deserves better.

It feels weird to close a door without knowing the next one that will open but sometimes you need to be in that dark in-between space for a little bit, the threshold of potential and opportunity, to have all your loose ends tied up before you can start untying any new ones.

By releasing the idea behind Empowered Conversation, I am willing it to move elsewhere, to join forces with someone new. Someone who is ready and waiting on some awkward Zoom meeting where no one has any ideas and they’re trying to come up with one. Maybe, it’s happening, right at this moment. I sincerely hope it is.