Grief, Growth and Entrepreneurship

What really matters when you become super aware of how short life is and how precious time is, is that you spend that time doing things that are important to you?

This is the Entrepreneur School Podcast where we believe you can run a thriving business and still make your family a priority. This show is all about supporting you the emerging or early stage Entrepreneur on your journey from solopreneur. To CEO, while wearing all of the other hats in your life. My name is Kelly Sinclair and I'm a brand and marketing strategist who started a business with two kids under 3am, a corporate PR girl turned entrepreneur after I learned the hard way that life is too short to waste doing things that burn you out. On this show, you'll hear inspiring stories from other business owners on their journey, and learn strategies to help you grow a profitable business, while making it all fit into the life that you want. Welcome to Entrepreneur School.

So this is one of my entrepreneurship in real life episodes where I take you behind the scenes to what is going on presently in my life, or what's happening that is affecting sort of where I'm at right now in this season of business, and I'm at war life. And it is March and March is a historically terrible month for me because it is the anniversary of when I lost my mom in 2017. And so it's hard to even believe that it's been seven years now, since that happened, it was a very traumatic experience for me and for my family. And it really ended up being the catalyst to me starting my own business. So while it was an incredibly challenging and sad, emotional time, I also see the gift that came from it, which is that I converted my entire life and career path to being an entrepreneur to focusing on building the Family Centered business and schedule that works for me and my family and our lives. And now to be able to actually share about that with you through this podcast. So I want to share something that I haven't shared before, I'll give you the background as far as the whole story of how things came to be. And that is typically what I have shared in the past and where it's ended. But know that seven more years have passed. And I've done more work on myself, including a lot more therapy and exploring what living with grief really feels like in looks like and how to how, how it plays out for me. I want to share more about that. Because I think that there is a perception that grief is something that is short term, or is only heavy for a period of time or at certain times of the year around milestones related to whatever the grief is about. But it's truly something that exists all the time. And it's something that rears its head whenever it wants to. And most of the time, that's not when you're expecting it, not when you're welcoming it and certainly not when you want it. And for me as a kind of person who really likes to like control things, particularly my emotions, because when I feel sad, I feel weak and vulnerable. Hello Enneagram eats and also just those are not fun feelings to feel, right? I don't want those to show up just whenever they want. I was crying for basically the entire seven years to be like, alright, I'll be sad on the anniversary of mom's passing on Mother's Day and on her birthday. And it is ridiculous to think that that is how it can work. So first off, if you haven't heard the story, and if you have here's a little recap. My mom had breast cancer and she had it for a few years and then went through all of her treatments and it was in remission and then all of a sudden it came back really aggressive. Have Li. And that was a time when I had gone back to work only for a few months after having my second daughter. And of course, in Canada, we have maternity leave, which is wonderful. And so I just been back after a few months and have had like, the transition back to work, you know, if you're Canadian, and you've done this is a lot, especially coming off of a year, and you kind of just feel like, oh, it's gonna take a while I gotta figure this out, you know nothing is it's it's normal to feel like a zombie, it's normal to feel like I can't function without a liter of coffee is normal to feel like I'm so tired all the time, and nobody's happy. And all we're doing is like feeding hangry children and no quality time exists because we get up so early. And for us that was 6am kids out of the house, dropping them off in a day home, driving into the city to commute to work, trying to beat rush hour, I literally took a thermos of coffee to refill my go mug, because it was like I could have just use an IV, like give me all the caffeine I can't function. And I'd have to be at my office at 7am, only to leave at four, to pick my kids up at 530 to basically just feed them and put them to bed. And that was like to do that again every single day. And it's just interesting to me to look back at it now and realize that I, I didn't see that as a problem. I mean, I didn't like it. But it wasn't standing out to me as like, oh, this needs to change. Right. And so what changed, it was something outside of my control. And that was losing my mom, when she all of a sudden had the cancer spread into her brain and started having seizures, and was very quickly hospitalized. And the end was very fast. It was eight days from me deciding that I was going to leave my job and spend more time with her. So my kids could have a relationship with her. And then it was done. We lost her.

And going through all of the phases of grief immediately afterwards, of course, was very challenging to walk through planning a funeral delivering a eulogy, which I did, and talking to my kids about it who were so little. And then thinking about what do I want to do with my life now because I've left my job? How do I? What how do I decide what's next? How do I even have the capacity to think about that? Right? And it was, again, at the time, you don't see these things. Now seven years later, having had therapy and time to reflect back on it, it's very clear that I needed to not be in the job that I was in, I needed a change. And I don't know that I would have made that change on my own accord. I really don't. And so I really a lot of credit to anybody who makes that decision for themselves and decides I can't, I don't want to do this nine to five career or this corporate ladder climbing or this working for somebody else, or just doing something that doesn't align with my passions or my values. That's the awareness that I had afterwards is that what really matters when you become super aware of how short life is and how precious time is, is that you spend the time doing things that are important to you. And when that comes to your career, it should be working in a space that lights you up in a in a job that is fueled by your passion is that brings you joy, and that allows that joy to spread to other people and with your family. Having time with them. Not just you know, like those first five years of your kids lives are like the most impressionable, and they're home a lot. And they could be home a lot right before they go to school. So those are such important years. And so now, that's the story of what all happened. And I thought that was the end of my story. And that was all that I would be able to share because I saw you know, I can look back on it. I see what happened. I see how it affected me. I see what I did with it. You know, I took that grief and I turned it into an entire new career and entire new way of living for my family which has been so bad offical seriously being able to have the flexibility to do what I do in work in the timeline that I want and realizing how important that really is. And also how not selfish that is, to be able to have that flexibility. It's, it's one of the absolute most amazing things about being an entrepreneur is building your own schedule around the life that you want. And being able to work however, whenever from wherever that you want, like I went for a massage this morning, my kids are off school all week, I love working in pockets of time, right now, as they record this, I hope that they're not about to walk through the door and make the dog's bark, I'm not really sure if that's going to happen.

But what I now see, as I'm looking back is the importance of understanding and really living with these two opposing feelings at all times, in terms of grief being a heavy, sad feeling that can completely collapse you into a puddle at a moment's notice. And joy, being excited to progress to build relationships to build a life and build a business that you want around what makes you happy. And that these these things always exist together when you're someone who's experienced grief. And just to caveat, this grief is not just about a loss of a person, a close person to you. Or it could be a relationship, it could be that you move to a new place, that you're you've lost friends that you've lost a career, you lost a job, whatever it is, grief exists in most people's lives from but to think that you're going to get over it. And I'm using air quotes like one day, it doesn't exist anymore, it's more about learning to navigate both of these things at the same time and allow for when they when they need to intermix, and don't feel guilty about feeling happy at times when you think you should be feeling sad. And don't feel mad about feeling sad, because it's not a designated day of crying. So it would have been in the way that I was looking at things for most of the last seven years. And so it's really about like resilience and how this strengthens you and that you can have these two emotions or two countering feelings coexisting at all times. And then work through that and allow for those to happen. Because last year, I had a full on breakdown.

Six years post was in my mom, I took the entire month of march off of work on strike. Because I was like I have been pushing this all down, I have not been allowing this to come up. And as they say, sitting with your emotions. You're also an eye roller at that kind of a statement like I was, it means that like you actually feel them. If you're sad, you feel sad, and you let yourself do what you need to do when you feel sad. And for me that was binge watched the rest of the TV series, this is us, which was incredibly cathartic for, especially for losing a parent and for dealing with life and loss and all of those emotions, oh my gosh, like tearing up just thinking about it was important to like help have somebody like pull it out of me, and then be able to work through how I felt about it afterwards and actually addressing it, I think that's really the main thing is that you actually addressed the emotion that you have, instead of just saying, I'll deal with this later, I'll deal with this later. Or that's not welcome here or right now I have to do a launch or I need to get a new client or I have to like hustle for this or I'm supposed to be focused on this. I was about to do a launch last March, I was launching a new program. I had sold tickets to an event and I cancelled it all because this became very clearly the priority for me and I had to make that choice for myself. And so the purpose of me talking about this one is therapy to myself of course at a time of year where this episode will be airing right around March 16, which was what the day that my last my mom in 2017. And it's also to share this reflection for you if you are in a place where you've dealt with loss, grief, heavy emotions, the conflict of feeling that you should should be feeling one way when you're really feeling another way, and you're trying to like control the emotions in you, and how that really affects how you navigate through life. And of course, it affects you, as a business owner, you can't just put your business over here and your personal life at the door. I remember that feeling, working in corporate where it was like, well, you check your personal stuff at the door. And it's like, that's not real. We're human beings, we have emotions, we have feelings, we have life. And life and business are very interwoven, and there is no way of dividing the two.

So I think that that was my big lesson is that maybe I was still trying to write, I was trying to divide, distract myself with the work because I was excited about the work and I liked doing the work. But I wasn't allowing myself to feel the feels. And that both of these things can happen. You can do the work and feel the feels, and pause on the work and, like, communicate, if you've clients, you have people that you're working with that you need to like, you know, shift a deadline or something people can be empathetic, it's possible. And if they're not, they're not the right people to be around you to be working with, or for or any of those things. So that was the message that I felt called to share right now. Just how to be resilient and how to accept the emotions, not really how to actually because I don't have like a blueprint for you. But mostly just to showcase that. This kind of learning and navigating all of the stuff that's happening, takes time to do. But it is possible, it is possible to come through with clarity to grow as a person to become aware of the emotions that you are experiencing, and how to manage them in your own personal way. Because there's no blueprint for this, there's no oh, just go watch this show. Take a box of Kleenex take a week off work, cry it out and move on. Sometimes I love a good show. I love the notebook I love like watching a sad movie, when I like I feel like I need a cry and I need something to help draw it out of me. I'll do that for sure. But there's no one way one size fits all for people to walk through this. The purpose of me sharing this is just to show you that if you are also experiencing any of this, you're not alone. And that's what I wanted to say.

So if this connects for you, on a personal level, and you want to reach out and talk about it more, I am open my DMs are always open over on Instagram. So please reach out at Ksco_Kelly, and send me a message and let me know what's going on. Because it can feel very lonely to go through these heavy emotions and these challenging times. And sometimes it's just really good to know that somebody else has had a similar experience. And I'm happy to share more about that. If, if you feel called to reach out and connect. So I'm gonna leave it at that and I will see you with a much more upbeat I'm sure episode. Next week, we'll dive back into all things business strategies, visibility promoting yourself. But I always wanted to make sure I'm sharing the behind the scenes life as an entrepreneur.

You did it you just listen to another episode of the Entrepreneur School Podcast. It's like you just went to business school while you folded your laundry, prep dinner or picked up your kids at school. Thank you so much for being here. I want to personally celebrate your commitment to growing your business. You can imagine I'm throwing confetti for you right now. If you enjoyed today's episode, please leave us a review. Make sure you're subscribed and let us know you're listening by screenshotting this episode, and tagging us on Instagram, head to entrepreneurschool.ca for tons of tools and resources to help you grow your business while keeping your family a priority. You can subscribe to our email list and join our community. And until next time, go out there and do the thing.