06/21/2026
In February, I hit rock bottom. Not the kind that everyone sees. The quiet kind. The kind where you sit alone and start making plans to walk away from everything you’ve spent years building.
I was ready to close my business. Close the studio, sell the furniture, sell the wardrobe. I was ready to pack up the dream that had carried me for the last 11 years and convince myself it was time to let it go.
Perfectionism had become a prison. Doubt had become a constant companion. Imposter syndrome had grown so loud that I could no longer hear the truth beneath it.
The weight of expectations I placed on myself, combined with undiagnosed depression, anxiety, and OCD, had convinced me that maybe I wasn’t good enough. Maybe I wasn’t capable enough. Maybe I had been chasing something that was never meant for me.
And yet every time I imagined walking away, I would break. Because deep down, I couldn’t understand why this dream, this purpose, this calling had been placed so firmly on my heart if it wasn’t meant to become something.
Thankfully, I had people who refused to let me give up on myself. My husband who held hope when I couldn’t. My therapist who helped me find my way back.
So in April, I stopped trying to create.
I started trying to heal in ways I hadn’t before.
I began therapy, I received diagnoses, I started medication, I stepped away from the pressure to produce, I poured my energy into caring for my grandmother post stroke, and little by little, the fog began to lift. For the first time in a long time, I could breathe again.
What I’ve learned is that I wasn’t failing, I wasn’t unqualified, I wasn’t an imposter.
I was exhausted.
I was carrying things that were never meant to be carried alone and somewhere along the way, I had forgotten the gifts I bring to this world.
The dream was never the problem. The dream was waiting patiently for me to find my way back to myself.
The dream was never asking me to be perfect—It was simply asking me to stay.
That’s why Arthera exists.
I know now that I am not the only woman who has stood at the edge of giving up on herself.
I’m not the only woman who has forgotten her worth beneath the weight of expectations.
I’m not the only woman trying to remember who she is underneath the roles, responsibilities, fears, and stories she’s carried for far too long.
For a while, I thought I was building retreats. What I realize now is that we’re building something much deeper.
A place to exhale.
A place to be seen.
A place to remember.
A community of women finding their way back to themselves, together. Healing was never meant to happen in isolation. If this season has taught me anything, it’s that the moments we feel most alone are often the moments we need connection the most.
I stayed because people believed in me when I couldn’t believe in myself. I stayed because there was still something inside me worth fighting for. I stayed because I know there are other women walking this same road.
And maybe that’s what healing is, not becoming someone new.
But remembering who you’ve been all along.
